Mark Hungerford, SVP of L2L Manufacturing Solutions
Highlights:
- Food manufacturers face major challenges with maintenance and downtime, costing the industry billions of dollars annually.
- By leveraging real-time data through a connected workforce platform, fostering a collaborative approach to maintenance, and adopting proactive maintenance strategies (predictive and preventive), manufacturers can overcome these obstacles.
- Implementing these strategies will lead to less downtime, greater operational efficiency, longer equipment life, improved communication and greater employee satisfaction – ultimately resulting in long-term success in food production.
Unplanned downtime is estimated to cost manufacturing companies a lot of money $50 billion per year Overall, food manufacturers are no exception. Common roadblocks such as failure to leverage real-time data, poor internal communication, and outdated processes prevent manufacturers from utilizing all resources to maximize plant uptime, ultimately costing them millions of dollars in maintenance.
Overcoming maintenance challenges is critical if companies want to stay competitive in today’s technology-driven world. Failing to do so can lead to lost revenue and capacity, delayed deliveries to customers, damaged customer relationships, and falling behind competitors. Let’s look at three ways food manufacturers can take action today to most effectively overcome these obstacles.
1. Leverage real-time data to optimize maintenance outcomes
Traditionally, factories had employees and maintenance technicians diligently taking notes, managing paperwork, and manually entering data into operating systems. Technicians who followed (or still follow) this model often struggled to find and analyze machine data to optimize reliability and business decisions, and knowledge was lost entirely when more senior technicians left the job. Additionally, accessing maintenance reports and machine history could require a request to the factory IT department, a very cumbersome process that many never ended up doing.
A food company had a process for manually recording the information needed to identify maintenance issues and request reports. Average 3-4 daysManual data entry is prone to human error, which can mean important information isn’t recorded at all or data is lost. These outdated processes mean your team loses full visibility into plant operations without the ability to view data in real time and resolve issues immediately.
To make food manufacturing plants smarter and more efficient, it is essential to provide frontline workers with the highest quality data from across the plant while production is ongoing, not after the fact. Investing in a solution like a connected workforce platform can provide your teams with details of what is currently happening on the floor across all production dimensions: people, process, materials, and machines. This data is generated and consumed by AI and translated into actions for use by your frontline workers. The purpose of a connected workforce platform is to give everyone across your organization a clear view of what is happening on the plant floor, empowering your teams to proactively respond to equipment failures. Digitizing these insights into one platform also provides a holistic view of how to effectively increase operational availability and manage your plant assets.
2. Foster a collaborative approach to maintenance
A people-centric approach is essential to increasing the productivity of your machines and factories. A focus on your employees lays the foundation for success. Giving your workers standard work guidance and the connectivity they need enables them to work together and do their best work.
One way that connected workforce platforms can bring immense value to manufacturing plants is by fostering a sense of collaboration that keeps the entire organization moving in the same direction. Other benefits of these platforms include:
- Goal adjustments: It provides a central place to clearly state expectations across the company.
- Internal communication: It gives organizations the tools they need to streamline communication and share information and resources instantly.
- Proactive problem solving: It gives technicians and operators access to a machine’s history and sends them real-time alerts if there may be an issue or if it’s near time for a check-in.
- automation: Organizations can automate and standardize work processes to maximize productivity and improve outcomes.
- Employee Retention: The result is a manufacturing plant that runs smoothly and addresses issues quickly and proactively, leading to happier, more productive employees and increased retention.
A collaborative approach ultimately leads to greater success: it inspires teams to perform at their best, maximizes everyone’s contribution, and helps organizations align and achieve production and quality goals.
3. Adopt a preventative maintenance strategy
Ensuring that equipment operates safely and efficiently is critical, especially considering the high costs associated with maintenance and unplanned downtime. Relying on reactive maintenance is not sustainable as it can result in missed production quotas, shortened equipment lifespans and increased strain on maintenance technicians.
The best approach for manufacturers is to adopt a proactive maintenance strategy that is both predictive and preventative – this is where a Connected Workforce platform really shines.
Predictive maintenance leverages AI-powered technology to monitor equipment in real time and provide early warning of potential failures, enabling maintenance teams to address issues before they cause significant disruptions. Connected workforce solutions integrate data from various sources to enable seamless communication and coordination among team members, powering real-time data analysis and proactive corrective actions based on gained insights. This reduces costs, extends asset life, and minimizes the need for large spare part inventories.
In contrast, preventive maintenance focuses on regular maintenance activities to prevent unexpected breakdowns. It is based on cycles or fixed intervals and includes tasks such as lubrication, cleaning, inspection, and part replacement. A connected workforce platform supports preventive maintenance by maintaining digital records, scheduling tasks, and ensuring all maintenance activities are tracked and performed efficiently.
Additionally, connected workforce software can reveal where ongoing machine anomalies are occurring, allowing maintenance technicians to stop reacting to problems and instead focus on proactive maintenance. By maintaining digital records of anomaly trends and resolutions, technicians also have easy access to a machine’s history, a key advantage in highly regulated manufacturing environments.
By combining a proactive maintenance strategy with a connected workforce platform, manufacturers can improve operational efficiency, extend equipment life, reduce downtime and ultimately make their business more successful.
Conclusion
Implementing a Connected Workforce platform can be a transformative solution for food manufacturers struggling with maintenance challenges and operational inefficiencies. By leveraging real-time data, fostering collaboration, and adopting a proactive maintenance strategy, companies can significantly reduce downtime and maintenance costs.
Embracing these advancements will not only help you stay competitive, but also pave the way for a smarter, more efficient future for food manufacturing. If factories want to reach their full potential, a focus on digitalization and adopting a connected workforce platform is essential to maintaining high productivity and achieving long-term success.
