Growth is key in the manufacturing industry. You always want to have more orders, bigger customers, and greater production capacity. For some manufacturing businesses, though, increasing production can lead to a problem that nobody wants increased administrative work.
It is often believed that doubling your production rate will automatically mean you will need twice as many people working at the backend. This means hiring more data-entry personnel, inventory managers, and accountants because you need to track everything on the production floor. If you are finding yourself doing this, then you are not really scaling, but only growing.
The best way to increase your production is by automating the interaction between the physical process and the paperwork side of manufacturing.
Trapped by Manual Procedures
In a manual world, data comes and goes in bursts. The machine operator writes down their hours in an hour card. The material supervisor enters consumption into a clipboard. Come Friday or Monday morning, all that paper piles up and makes its way to the admin assistant who must enter everything manually into your ERP or accounting software.
When you decide to double production, don’t expect the paperwork process to stay the same. As production increases, the need for hour cards, scrap forms, and materials grows exponentially. To be able to double production without having to hire additional administrators, you need to get rid of the paper.
Data Entry Closer to the Source
The best approach to avoid administrative bloat is to take data input away from the back office and place it directly in the workplace where the data originated. The instant production data is entered electronically at the point of creation; there is nothing administrative about having to re-enter that data.
In essence, by implementing a shop floor data collection software tool like a lightweight manufacturing system, you can let your workers be your master’s at data entry. The moment that an employee scans a bar code to begin their job order, they have instantly created a labour transaction. There is no need to analyse timesheets, decode writing, and manually enter anything into the system.
Inventory and Material Usage Automation
Another process that may suffer under scaling due to administrative issues includes inventory control. Manual control of raw material movement from the warehouse to the manufacturing area is labour-intensive even at moderate scales.
An advanced system will include automation of this activity by either backflushing or directed material issue. When a manufacturing order is closed, the system will automatically subtract required Bill of Materials elements from the inventory. You will always know the exact amount of material available because the system will do the calculations, not an administrator checking bins each day.
Real-Time Transparency vs. Reacting to Reports
A manual administration will always be reactive in nature. It takes weeks before you know that something went wrong because of reports being reconciled. With automation, you get the benefit of real-time transparency. There’s no need for an administrator to create a report so you know which jobs are lagging; the software will alert you immediately.
The change will allow your current administrative staff to concentrate on more valuable activities such as analysis, planning, and vendor negotiation instead of fighting data for survival.
Conclusion
Business growth does not have to mean increasing chaos. Through proper use of technology that connects the two areas of operations in manufacturing industry, you will manage twice the production capacity using the same number of administrators. Do not allow paperwork to slow down your expansion process. Automate the procedure to make your business grow.
