COVID19 has pressed the RESTART button, brought the entire world to the same starting line. Everyone will start the race after the gunshot from the start line. By and large, nobody is expecting that after the lockdown situation will improve immediately. No one has a fair idea, how fast the economy will overcome this COVI-19 effect. Many customers lost orders, canceled orders, pipeline projects may also affect. So how companies will deal with this situation? What will change probably for the short term, long term, or maybe forever?
It is the time to expect more from your own company, employees to come out of this situation faster and least from the customer. It is the time to dive inside and find the best abilities and improvisation scope you have within your organization. Here are some possible ways one can think of.
Reduce Wastage:
Material cost may not come down, nor is cheap material advisable. Right from top management to bottom one should think twice before consuming any material be it stationery, raw material, electricity, or any other materials. Find every opportunity to save material, reduce buying and improvise the cash flow. Can you set a target for your own company of material wastage reduction 2%-5% or even more? Even if it requires to daily measure material wastage don’t hesitate to do it. It’s an opportunity for cost reduction.
Innovation – R&D:
It’s the right time to utilize your energy, time, and efforts for your own innovations – R&D. Every company has some dreams to innovate, but never gets time, at least that’s what we heard many times. Here is the right time! Innovation does not mean a new product, innovation means any efforts that improve your efficiency, productivity, better way of production, yield improvement, in house law cost automation, etc.
Most of the companies have hidden Einstein, it’s the time to nurture them, support them for the better future of the company. Discuss-Engage-Find-Try-Improvise is the only mantra.
Quality:
Every company has its own production processes. Each quality issue has some root causes within these processes be it internal or customer complaints. But in routine production delivery always wins the priority against fixing the root causes.
Step 1: Focus first on what are the quality parameters required for each process? Define it if not known.
Step 2: Once defined, make sure it is measured every time, so that fact and data can speak on its own for every problem and its root cause. It could be recorded via a human interface or you could think of real-time SPC data collection monitoring, depends on the complexity and importance. If you could achieve this, in other words, you have already gone to the next level of a quality standard without an auditor, certificate, or customer demand.
Step 3: Think of preventive actions instead of corrective actions. Welcome to Industry 4.0 maybe thanks to COVID-19. In some cases it could lead to the perfect time to implement QMS (Quality Management System), considering your production won’t affect at all and the desired team can actively participate in the implementation of the same. Some possible QMS solutions you can refer to here https://www.auto-design-online.com/products/qda-solutions.
Planning & Efficiency:
Planning plays a major role to balance the ongoing productions and utilize the time for quality improvisation. With systematic planning and strategy one could utilize the maximum both manpower and machine. For example Think of utilizing a cheaper electricity rate in the night – how could you benefit from this? If you are in a business, where the machine does the maximum tasks, and manpower is merely for loading and unloading, will this not improvise your profit margin?
The only way to lead the race is, utilize the maximum existing infrastructure without investing further into infrastructure. If any of your machine utilization rate (if known) is below 80-90% and despite that, if you invest more could be a costly affair in the current situation.
In Europe companies are able to utilize machine/infrastructure even up to 120%, that’s how they give competition to Asia and the rest of the world. You might be able to do better planning on your own or use some systems, Available IoT solutions that could monitor and help you to improvise utilization.
Expand Market/product Reach:
Expertise making in a similar part sometimes becomes your own weakness. E.g. one company is an expert in stamping parts or pistons. Now you might be afraid to explore other industries despite the fact that they need your process (plastic injection, casting, stamping, etc.). This fear is the mindset blocker for your design, development, and production team or even for management.
Research, Invest time and some money to explore new areas you haven’t explored before, but your process can match it. Explore other countries, other industries you haven’t before – today is the new Dawn!
Low-cost Automation:
If you know your bottlenecks or major issues in manual operations, define a dedicated task force team to find low-cost automation. In most of the companies production role is restricted to apply mind and efforts for the production line despite having supervisors below the chain. Assign them a challenge with a timeline and you may regret, why haven’t we done this before?
Supplier improvisation:
Help your suppliers to reduce cost and improvise quality. See the larger benefit, if you are able to reduce raw material /product cost by engaging your team with supplier, it’s a win-win for both. Assume you are able to reduce 10% on the finished good you are purchasing from a supplier in this exercise. How much would you save in months and years for your company? Set some target and deadline for them to ensure they also utilize the time just like you post lockdown!
These are some of the doable approaches you could adopt after lockdown. So let’s fight the negativity with combined positivity and we all can contribute. Let overcome these dark clouds with combined efforts. This is an opportunity to change within!
“Good, better, best. Never let it rest. 'Till your good is better and your better is best.” – St. Jerome
