Although many factories prioritize improving efficiency because it saves them money, data has shown that increasing production capacity should be at the top of the priority list.
This has proven to be 100 percent true, especially in the pandemic years, when most companies searched for ways to boost their production rather than lowering their prices.
Here is a step-by-step, cost-efficient strategy to increase your factory’s production capacity without breaking the bank.
1. Start by the inefficiencies in your operation
The first thing factories do to scale up their production is to hire more people, buy more machines, and expand the operation as a whole. However, this approach will necessitate more space and time to purchase machinery, hire and train new employees, and integrate new operators into the supply chain system.
If you can spare the extra cost and time-consuming process, this method has proven to be efficient.
On the other hand, what would be considerably smarter is to start by examining what you can improve and the inefficiencies you can remove to augment capacity.
2. Manage your waste
Consider this: any action or procedure that does not bring any added-value to the quality of the product or to the production line, is waste.
Try reducing waste to push production to its optimal capacity and reinvesting it in additional products.
3. Reorganize your production line
Increasing productivity means more pressure on line workers. Right? Not at all. When factory managers fail to increase capacity, it is hardly a consequence of workers being lazy, but rather an inefficient approach to managing existing resources.
Rearranging the production line or the amount of waste produced in a process increases capacity. Therefore, take a look on who you can move and what preparations you can organize prior to the production process, to limit waste of time and labor and reach an optimized capacity.
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