There is broad consensus that data-driven decision-making is essential to success in manufacturing. Customers’ price-consciousness, combined with demands for quality and on-time delivery, leave little room for error and seat-of-the-pants measures. Instead, well-run manufacturers increasingly rely on insights from operational systems across the front office and shop floor to make better-informed decisions.
Despite wide acceptance of data-driven manufacturing principles, 20% of the manufacturers participating in a recent survey reported making bad decisions on a frequent basis because of data they did not have, did not trust, or could not access. By contrast, the same survey found 15 areas—from quality control to production efficiencies to sales—where 70% or more respondents reported significant business improvements when manufacturing data was considered reliable and accessible.
End-to-end control and visibility of the manufacturing cycle requires filling data gaps between front-office planning operations and actual production execution, quality assurance and warehousing/shipping. Planning well is important, but so is being aware of when production delays and quality issues have impeded plans. So, the necessary information is immediately on hand to take corrective action and prevent manageable problems from cascading into significant delays.
For instance, SAY Plastics uses dashboards, advanced production tracking, and alert systems in its enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to monitor production timelines. Immediate access to production metrics help SAY identify bottlenecks, adjust schedules on the fly, and optimize resource allocation to meet deadlines. Meanwhile, real-time insights delivered via dashboards and alerts allow the company to quickly address any issues in the supply chain. As a result, SAY Plastics’ on-time delivery rates are now near to 100%.
In the survey, two of the largest reported gaps were in production performance and quality control. These are areas where it is not unusual to find isolated management systems decoupled from the business’s primary manufacturing operating system. Closing these data gaps requires integrating the results from production monitoring, process monitoring, and quality inspections into the information flow that informs the front-office planning and customer relations teams, so they can maneuver through the inevitable twists and turns of daily production.
SIGN Fracture Care, an FDA-registered and ISO 13485-certified medical device manufacturer, offers a good example of how to close the gap between quality control and the rest of the organization. As a highly regulated company, having properly calibrated inspection equipment supported by rigorous documentation is fundamental to quality inspections.
Previously, manual inspection processes at SIGN produced more paperwork, requiring more double checks and resources than perhaps any other processes in the business. However, ISO 13485 and FDA auditors prefer evidence-based audits over the older narrative-based format, so ready access to comprehensive device history records has become critical to maintaining regulatory compliance. In response, SIGN has automated its processes by using the ERP system’s quality modules to trigger and document all inspections as well to schedule and document all of its gauge calibrations. Now all the storage is digital, and inspection data is immediately available.
In-line quality inspections also serve to validate the acceptability of work in process as it progresses to finished goods. Production and process monitoring play a central role in supporting these inspections. Production monitoring tracks a work order’s progress through the production phase. Meanwhile, process monitoring verifies whether tooling and equipment are performing to specification.
Without real-time production, process and quality information, planners often find themselves unknowingly scheduling jobs and materials into work centers that are still occupied with a prior production task. One problem is then compounded by the arrival of a soon-to-be second problem. By contrast, creating a closed information loop that bridges shop-floor results and front-office software lets planners realistically schedule use of equipment, materials, and labor.
The demand to create a closed loop across the shop floor and front office is why so many manufacturers are focusing significant operational and information technology efforts on connecting their ERP, manufacturing execution and quality assurance—either through systems integration or adoption of platforms with native integration of these disciplines.
Closed-loop, data-driven decision-making
Let’s review five areas identified as data deficiencies in the survey where manufacturers are using integrated planning, production, and quality data to improve their performance.
Quality control (47%) – An example of data-driven quality control is in-process inspection. Operators (or automated equipment) record periodic measurements. If a measurement fails to occur, supervisors are notified. This catches defects before they become systemic. and it creates data that can update the ERP system on production constraints and any impacts on product delivery. And the data can support statistical process control (SPC) analysis and customer documentation.
Business strategy (43%) – A foundational aspect of managing operations using ERP or similar systems is gaining access to actual cost data, driven in part by shop floor process and production monitoring, to produce product and customer scorecards. This helps to identify strategic information like products that are profitable, products requiring price updates, and the best customers for overall profitability.
Customer service/support (36%) – A frequent customer question is, “When can I get my order?” When the capable-to-promise feature of an ERP system aggregates up-to-the-moment data from inventory and production software—such as raw material and consumption rates, machine and labor availability, process and lead times, and competing schedules—it can inform customer service reps with fact-driven delivery time frames.
Operator performance (34%) – Using production and process monitoring to automatically track cycle times for both operators and machines, and feeding information to the ERP system provides accurate runs-best information. This empowers managers to assign jobs based on data, not feelings.
Order management (32%) – Often multiple orders compete for inventory and production resources. ERP systems automatically sort through the constraints and identify a best path forward. When the ERP system is populated in real time with data from production and process monitoring, quality inspections, inventory management, and supply chain management, manufacturers are empowered to optimize production schedules and also identify any resources that need to be expedited or expanded to prevent late deliveries or rush-delivery fees.
Many manufacturers still face information gaps due to error-prone manual record-keeping and disconnected information systems. Lacking access to data they can trust, they fall back to seat-of-the-pants or gut-level decision-making. By integrating production and process monitoring, quality management, and other operational systems into company-wide, closed-loop information networks, manufacturers gain the power to make data-driven decisions in real time and improve performance across nearly all aspects of their operations.