Unlock Continuous Improvement in 3 Key Areas

By Carol M. Schafer, Global Senior Marketing Manager, LifecycleIQ Services, Rockwell Automation

In a highly connected world, consumers have greater visibility into manufacturing businesses faster than ever before via digital media. With an estimated 200 billion posts a day on X (formerly tweets on Twitter) alone, companies are engaged in an unprecedented level of “virtual conversation” with the public.

Now, it's not enough to focus business planning solely on keeping operations up and running; manufacturers must also execute continual improvement strategies in three areas of marked social focus — safety, sustainability and agility that enables customer service.

Workplace and Operational Safety

For consumers, it might seem that products simply appear on store shelves or become available online. The process of manufacturing and the many steps taken to keep workers safe aren't always visible to them. However, when an incident occurs, it becomes public quickly.

A world-class safety program resulting in zero injuries is the goal of every manufacturer. According to the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM),13 million workers are employed in the manufacturing sector in the United States. Roughly 12% of the global population — about 960,000,000 people — work in manufacturing. Employers are concerned about worker safety and product safety for their customers.

Most, if not all, manufacturers have safety measures already in place to support and provide worker and product safety. As with any operational policies and procedures, safety programs need to be reevaluated and updated over time. Implementing additional or improved safety measures is indeed a cost, but a risk-versus-benefits analysis should help factor in the positive impact on operational performance.

A holistic view from an operational and a human perspective will reveal valuable insights around the correlation between better safety and increased productivity. A smart safety solution can increase overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), reduce unplanned downtime, shorten restarts and help ensure safety compliance.

Many companies choose to partner with a third-party safety solutions provider who can help perform a thorough assessment. The right partner can help identify steps to mitigate risk, design and verify safety solutions, and install and validate any software and hardware modifications.

A reliable partner can work with the company’s team to use modern technologies that leverage both safety and operational data, contextualizing it to optimize processes and minimize risks. Areas for change might include machine safety, process safety, electrical safety and even cybersecurity.

For example, replacing hard-wired safety solutions with smart safety solutions reduces wiring and transforms the way safety is monitored and managed. Once all modifications are made or new safety solutions are installed, the safety solutions provider who helped perform the assessment and installation may provide system support and ongoing optimization.

If a corporate safety program has lost its effectiveness or visibility over time, it's time to update it. A safety solutions supplier can develop a modern program tailored for each manufacturing site based on current industry standards and the data compiled during the safety assessment.

However, any corporate program is only as effective as the internal change-management plan that introduces it to workers at the manufacturing firm. Adoption at the highest levels of the company and continual reminders of its importance can instill safety values into the business culture, keeping safety top of mind for everyone.

Sustainable Manufacturing

Industrial firms want to show continuous improvements in their journey toward sustainable manufacturing — net zero impact on the environment. Often, these initiatives are based on the circular economy theory.

A circular economy promotes less waste through sharing, repurposing, remanufacturing, and recycling and recovering materials to forestall end of life for manufacturing assets and systems. In theory, a manufacturing facility could be on a site for 10 years and then move to another site, leaving behind no impact on the environment.

With so many legacy sites still in operation, immediate concerns revolve around meeting tightening regulations and easing the road to compliance.

Taking the same holistic view used for safety solutions and applying it to the enterprise is useful in developing and executing a sustainability strategy. Sustainability isn’t a stand-alone concept; it's an integral part of production operations.

Process and manufacturing data can be collected, contextualized and configured to reveal opportunities to reduce material waste, and reduce the use of resources, such as water, air, gas, energy and steam (WAGES), and raw materials.

Change can be large-scale or smaller, but progress toward the net zero impact is the goal. A high-level view of the enterprise might reveal areas that require only a slight change that would result in significant gains.

For example, in 1987, the CEO of American Airlines, Robert Crandall, observed that a small change can indeed make a big difference. At that time, airlines routinely served food during most flights. Crandall’s now legendary decision to remove just one olive from the salads served on first-class flights saved the company $100,000 a year in today’s dollars.

So, challenging automation workers to watch for an opportunity to suggest a solution on any scale, and rewarding that behavior when it's successful, is one way to find improvement in areas that only someone close to the work would know.

Sustainability is a complex mandate affecting many areas of operation, and there are many options to find the optimum solution for each application. In addition to traditional controls products, digital technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), augmented reality (AR), computing power and data-handling techniques can help significantly.

Serving the Customer

Product personalization isn't only a trend but, almost an expectation of the marketplace. From purchasing a cell phone case with a picture of a family pet on it to personalized medication, custom beverage blends and more, consumers are increasingly interested in buying products tailored for their lifestyle or preference.

The rate of technological change has accelerated, making many product life cycles shorter than before. Serving the customer is more than the traditional definition of customer service. Now, it entails anticipating and responding to a customer’s real needs, as opposed to providing a generic product and hoping enough people will buy it.

That means flexible manufacturing is the key to agility, resilience and long-term growth in the 21^st century. It provides companies the ability to offer desired product options and the agility to manufacture new or modified products in response to changing market demands. And serving customers at a higher, more personal level builds loyalty and confidence.