From this article you will learn:
- What are digital spaghetti diagrams
- How digital spaghetti diagrams and heat maps can be used to reduce plant costs
- How to cut costs with a digital spaghetti diagram
Spaghetti diagrams in internal logistics
Spaghetti diagrams are one of the basic tools used in the Lean methodology to map the movement of resources, allowing the identification of waste associated with transport and work organisation. The benefits of using spaghetti diagrams are quite well known, so I won't go into more detail here. For those interested in delving deeper into the topic, I recommend a blog post by Krzysztof Dobrowolski. Thus, spaghetti diagrams have a lot of advantages, but also a big disadvantage - their preparation requires a lot of work and time, which significantly reduces their actual usefulness. This is particularly important when analysing more complex and dependent processes.
Methodology supported by technology
An alternative to the classic method is the "digital spaghetti", created automatically by RTLS solutions (Real-time Location Systems) on the basis of precise measurements of the location and movement of the monitored resource (cart, worker, semi-finished product). The difference between the traditional and the digital spaghetti diagram is as follows:
Digital spaghetti diagrams are therefore much more accurate, provide the ability to recreate movement in the form of animation and play back a recording of the movement of a selected asset from any period. Digital spaghetti diagrams also do not require people to make observations or manual drawings, saving staff time considerably.
Another important tool provided by RTLS location systems are heatmaps, which allow visualisation of a large number of location points in a single image and not just for a single resource, but an arbitrarily large set.
Heat maps show not only the movement itself, but also its intensity. Where a spaghetti diagram shows an unreadable cluster of lines, in heat maps, thanks to the colour-based scale, the differences between areas can be clearly seen.
In terms of internal logistics applications, heat maps make it possible, for example, to identify at a glance in which parts of the plant selected resources spend the longest time. You can therefore quickly check whether they are working as planned. An example of this? If we see that a forklift assigned to a production zone also goes outside, we know that something "is going on". Such information is all the more useful as it is possible to draw up separate heat maps for movement and standstill, both for individual resources and broken down into groups (e.g. forklifts, hand trucks, employees). This type of information is also important for calculating the actual time of resource use. Heatmaps can be created separately for different time periods, including by shift, day, week or month.
Cost reduction in production and internal logistics
Spaghetti charts allow for the identification of main traffic routes along with potentially dangerous areas resulting from increased traffic or intersections of routes. They are also useful, for example, in identifying the frequency with which an employee leaves their workstation (e.g. to go to the tool room, to collect raw materials or information). Heatmaps, in turn, allow for obtaining a general picture of resource activity, e.g. the range of a foreman's rounds or the areas of operations performed by forklift trucks (e.g. which zones have the highest labour intensity). They are therefore a helpful tool for identifying process deficiencies.
Digital spaghetti and heat maps provide highly accurate data to identify and subsequently make savings and improvements in areas such as:
- Transport costs
- Forklift truck rental / purchase
- Optimising the use of storage space
- Allocation of staff to specific tasks
- Occupational safety
Want to find out more? Visit the Indoorway solution page and see where the technology for asset movement location and process monitoring is performing well, or email us at indoorway@aiut.com.