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    Graham Immerman
    Graham Immerman MachineMetrics / April 26, 2017

    How To Revolutionize Your Shop Floor With Confidence | MachineMetrics

    Fact: A Confident Employee Is A More Productive Employee.

    Balancing the concerns of both management and floor employees requires a nuanced touch. Avoiding an "us vs. them" mentality is critical to reducing costly inefficiencies. Operators may feel like senior management doesn't adequately address their concerns, causing them to become disengaged; as a result, managers lack confidence in their operators.  It is vital to build trust between everyone involved in the manufacturing process so problems can be quickly identified, and solutions can be effectively implemented as a team.

    Machine Metrics can solve these difficult problems by shoring up a shop's confidence, streamlining its processes, and facilitating communication. From easy integration to measurable success, MachineMetrics empowers your employees to make more confident decisions every step of the way.

     

    MachineMetrics Builds Operator Confidence:

     Imagine you are an operator: Every time you run Part XYZ the setup takes twice as long as planned, and the quoted cycle times do not match up with the real cycle time.  You have previously voiced your concerns about this part to your supervisor, but the lack of reliable data and a process for analyzing job performance leads to the job router never being updated.  This frequently happens in many shops without machine monitoring capabilities, and leads to increased operator disengagement.  We call this phenomenon “operator apathy”, and it leads to a culture of non-communication and ineffective problem-solving.   

    With MachineMetrics, the machine's visual dashboard is located right at the control panel, enabling operators to clearly see if they are meeting goals and expectations for the run. Thus, the operator becomes engaged in the process. Now the process becomes aligned for operator success, rather than set up for potential failure. Operators can comment, gauge the job performance, and in doing so, gauge their own performance. Instead of chasing down a supervisor every time they have an issue, they can become proactive problem solvers by being a part of the solution. The operator is now able to move from Apathy to Proactivity.

    MachineMetrics Builds Supervisor Confidence:

    Now imagine you are your floor supervisor: You might be responsible for 15-20 pieces of equipment, each with an operator that you need to hold accountable.  In shops without machine monitoring, supervisors often spend their day walking to each machine, talking to each operator, and gathering data manually.  Using the limited data they have, supervisors then have to crunch the numbers, consider the problems and potential solutions, determine what resources are needed, inform those resources, and then manually relay the plan to the operators. All of that requires A LOT of human touch points and communication, and during all this time, the problem hasn’t been solved, leading to frustration for all and lost production time.

    Using a machine monitoring system (such as MachineMetrics) gives supervisors increased visibility of real-time data, allowing them manage by exception, and have confidence that the rest of the shop is running smoothly at any given moment. Quickly addressing problems in real-time breeds confidence to manage issues when they arise, and moves the supervisor out of fire-fighting to proactivity.

    A More Confident Shop Floor Team

    Not only does MachineMetrics transform the operator and supervisor roles, but it also has a positive impact on the interactions between them.  Operators gain confidence that their supervisors are going to address problems proactively and involve them in the process, and supervisors gain confidence that their employees are engaged. Additionally upper management gains confidence that the supervisors have control over the shop floor and that the operators are on the same team.  In this way, MachineMetrics helps manufacturers enhance their overall employee confidence, and makes for more positive and productive interactions between everyone on the team.

    The importance of empowering employees in the workplace should not be underestimated: it breeds individual and group confidence, enabling people to work more efficiently and more effectively. When people are confident in their work and with their employer, they are more willing to identify problems and suggest ways to improve quantity and quality of output. Organizations that have discovered the importance of empowering employees find that waste is eliminated, bureaucracy is reduced, and time is spent more efficiently.

    Take control of your operation and get instant visibility into production with MachineMetrics shop floor software.

    START DRIVING DECISIONS WITH MACHINE DATA.

    Ready to empower your shop floor?

    Learn More

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