Is your metal coating job shop operationally efficient?
Everyone is aware of the value of efficiency. Experts have created theoretical manufacturing concepts such as Lean Six Sigma, Just In Time, Lean Kaizen, and Theory of Constraints; to paint the picture of efficiency. The problem with these ideas is that they are difficult to understand, and then harder to interpret when you truly have an operations’ efficiency problem.
A simple method to gauge efficiency in your operations, is to take a tally of your headcount.
How many employees are Operators on the floor physically processing parts? And how many employees are in the rest of the organization? Think supervisors, managers, quality managers, administrative staff, and customer service headcount. For simplicity, we will call this second group Administrators.
In my experience, companies that can run a HIGH ratio of Operators/Administrators (5+ Operators for 1 Administrator) are going to perform well, deliver parts on time, with good quality, at a fair price with a healthy margin. This provides the time and resources needed to scale an organization.
Not to say this is easy. Operators take coaching, instruction, communication, time and energy to be functional. This is why only the best companies can achieve such a high ratio.
What does it take to institute a high ratio of Operators to Administrators?
World class communication. In any form. Digital, printed, verbal, or otherwise.
Operators today need a good deal of communication with other supervisors and managers to ensure that they are processing the right parts, at the right time, under the right parameters, with the right technique.
A plant management software system can efficiently communicate to an operator what, when, and how to process each job. It can also record what, when, how, and how long the operator worked on a job. This software system will then update all operators downstream, such that they are aware of the upstream operators completed work.
A well-tuned software system built for metal coatings, can enable one supervisor to manage many more operators, with better performance: The building blocks of a highly efficient operation.
In other industries, Tesla made a move to flatten out the management structure to get more employees in the trenches doing work. The move paid off in spades for them as their company valuation soars past the Detroit Automakers. https://cleantechnica.com/2018/05/15/elon-musk-takes-on-corporate-hierarchy-in-note-to-tesla-employees/