Improving Throughput with Closed-Loop Management Processes:
Top Benefits for Key Manufacturing Roles
Maximizing throughput has long been a strategic objective for manufacturers. In today’s increasingly competitive and fast-changing marketplace, it’s more critical than ever before to accommodate rapid adjustments to customer demand. But manufacturing systems often lack the necessary flexibility and immediate agility to support throughput increases that can make the difference between fulfilling more orders and falling behind competitors. The missing link to overcoming obstacles and driving meaningful improvements? Replacing manual and reactive analog systems with closed-loop management processes, enabled by digital solutions, that integrate top-down performance management and bottom-up problem solving.
See how you can leverage more modern digital solutions—without overhauling processes—to realize major long-term benefits across every level of your business and gain a competitive edge.
With Existing Management Systems
With Closed-Loop Management
Drew
At the start of her shift, frontline worker Drew receives her daily goals and relevant work instructions. But because there is a disconnect between the disparate systems and manual trackers used for production execution, Drew is unaware that priorities have changed mid-shift due to slower than normal production.
Without a continuous feedback loop, Drew’s valuable time is wasted on searching and gathering information for a now low-priority task. Not only does this affect Drew reaching today’s shift goal but over time, this recurring issue impacts her overall engagement and motivation.
With Existing Management Systems
With Closed-Loop Management
Critical data insights into shift progress are readily available in a real-time production dashboard, so Drew can measure her contribution to the shift goal. By gaining this level of performance knowledge, Drew is empowered to take action against problems and be more engaged in helping her shift meet measurable goals.
Results:
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Improves employee morale and organizational accountability
Expands problem-solving abilities to frontline workers
Maintaining the integrity and availability of the information fueling these decisions promotes resilient operations and an intuitive workforce. To date, these decisions are mostly being made using different sources of data.”
Frontline Worker
– Closing the Loop across Products, Processes, People, and Places
With Existing Management Systems
With Closed-Loop Management
Alex
Plant manager Alex receives several reports from supervisors across different functions, including Will. But even within the same site, there’s an organizational disconnect from the various management systems in place that leverage dissimilar metrics, reporting processes, and data models.
Without a common system that provides a singular, universal view of plant performance, key operational data is hidden and disconnected from P&L. This makes it challenging for Alex to identify recurring productivity losses and take the necessary steps to remedy them, which negatively impacts operating costs and order fulfillment.
With Existing Management Systems
With Closed-Loop Management
Establishing standardized, time-based KPIs aligns enterprise performance across the myriad functions within the plant. With this new, enhanced level of visibility, Alex now has the real-time contextual insights to focus on the critical work centers and losses that require targeted improvements.
Results:
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Helps to identify the improvements that will maximize business impact
Improves ability to make rapid, proactive changes to drive throughput
Middle managers are better equipped to make quicker data-driven decisions with all operational information available at full scale and real-time contextual insights to critical questions.
plant manager
– Closing the Loop across Products, Processes, People, and Places
With Existing Management Systems
With Existing Management Systems
With Closed-Loop Management
With Closed-Loop Management
Continuous improvement engineer Will must consult several different management systems across different functions, including handwritten logs and paper manuals. These analog processes limit information exchange between departments and create data silos.
When production issues arise, this broad range of disconnected systems obscures the root cause of bottlenecks. For Will, the lack of real-time operational visibility hinders his ability to garner data-driven insights. Without these insights, small performance problems stay hidden until they grow into bigger issues.
By standardizing the reporting across management systems within the plant, Will has the full-scale operational information needed to identify labor and asset bottlenecks. This improves his ability to make and broadly communicate his rapid, proactive decisions that optimize machines and people.
Reduces time spent on finding problems and increases time spent on problem-solving
Broadens real-time information exchange across departments and functions
Maintaining the integrity and availability of the information fueling these decisions promotes resilient operations and an intuitive workforce. To date, these decisions are mostly being made using different sources of data.”
Will
continuous improvement engineer
Results:
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– Closing the Loop across Products, Processes, People, and Places
With Existing Management Systems
With Existing Management Systems
With Closed-Loop Management
With Closed-Loop Management
For Manufacturing VP Linda, inconsistencies among each business unit’s performance metrics, reporting processes, and data models impede her ability to benchmark financial and operational data against continuous improvement initiatives.
This poor alignment hides repeatable best practices across products, lines, and sites. Without standardized, actionable information, Linda can’t make value-based decisions and loses opportunities to reinforce continuous improvement processes in real-time.
Standardizing critical data allows Linda to establish performance benchmarks to measure the results of improvement initiatives. By linking outcomes metrics from the shop floor to the top floor’s strategic objectives, Linda can validate value delivered over time to inform future investments.
Aligns digital transformation investments to profit and loss impact rather than assumptions
Accelerates time to value and scales performance improvements
Equating key performance indicators and metrics on the shop floor to financial dollar impacts on the top floor provides a standardized time-based system that can promote unparalleled levels of visibility.”
Linda
manufacturing vp
Results:
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– Closing the Loop across Products, Processes, People, and Places
Avoid Fragility and Gain Resiliency to
thrive in Today’s Marketplace
Closing the loop on production management capabilities is essential to driving throughput improvements. It enables manufacturers to sustain a virtuous cycle of continuous improvement by ensuring the quality of information, increasing organizational transparency, and eliminating friction and fragility from traditional systems.
