Manufacturing companies must constantly keep up with the needs of customers who expect ever better products. The criteria are clear and unchanging - better quality, faster delivery and lower prices. To meet these demands, manufacturing companies should therefore continuously improve their production processes. A common way to do this is to implement a continuous improvement approach, or Kaizen.
Kaizen philosophy has been successfully applied for many years, while recently - thanks to the development of technologies from the area of Industry 4.0 - its implementation can be based not only on observations, but also on hard data about production processes. Such data can be collected directly from machines (e.g. SCADA systems or PLC controllers), as well as from various external sensors - the most popular ones measure temperature, humidity or machine vibrations.
However, machine performance data are more useful in the context of maintenance and perhaps quality control, but do not help Lean teams to improve processes and reduce waste. So-called Real-Time Location Systems (RTLS) are more helpful for such applications. This product category has been on the market for several decades, mainly in the form of RFID tags. Unfortunately, as a result of a small range, the functionality of solutions based on this technology is limited, and the price of implementation can be prohibitive. On the other hand, other RTLS solutions, based on Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, are not suitable for industrial applications because of high susceptibility to interference. Data received from them is therefore of low quality and difficult to rely on.
The best technology for measuring the movement of objects inside production halls is Ultra-Wideband (UWB). It allows real-time measurement of the movement and location (and with a high accuracy of less than one meter) of objects such as forklifts, AGVs, workers, tools, logistics trains, or production in progress. Accurate traffic information obtained from such a system and presented in an appropriate manner can greatly support Kaizen initiatives.
How can RLTS solutions support Kaizen?
The Kaizen philosophy is based on continuous improvement of processes, material and information flow. One element of this approach is to reduce waste. In the terminology of Lean Manufacturing they are known as "muda".
By monitoring the mobile resources involved in production and internal logistics, companies can better understand the actual course of these processes and thus:
1. identify sources of loss,
2. develop loss reduction initiatives,
3. monitor the effectiveness of the implementation of these initiatives,
4. evaluate the results; and...
... repeat the whole process as many times as necessary.
Based on our experience in implementing RTLS solutions, the information provided by such systems can support Kaizen in several ways.
1. Reducing the time needed to find resources
Production planning is based on the assumption that the means of production will be available at the required place and time. In the case of heavy machinery, this assumption makes perfect sense, whereas in the case of tools and workers, the expected availability is not always guaranteed. A worker may still be busy with another process, a tool to change a machine may not have been put back in its place and a semi-finished product may not have arrived for some reason. As a result, other workers are waiting, production is not moving, the production plan is compromised. The losses resulting from production stoppages caused by the need to wait are often very high, and it is not always possible to make them up.
These problems can be very easily solved with the introduction of RTLS. By attaching a locator to key assets, they can be quickly and accurately located on a digital map of the area by typing the asset name into the internal viewer. Even if the item you are looking for has left the monitored area, you can see its last available location and the time it left the area.
2. Reduction of resource costs
Manufacturing companies have many different mobile resources which they use for production and internal logistics processes. These include forklift trucks, logistics trains, AGVs, but also employees. Each of these resources involves capital expenditure (Capex) and/or operating expenditure (Opex). These costs add up quickly and become difficult for the finance department to manage, as it is hard to get information about their actual use (e.g. forklift trucks from different manufacturers offer different figures). It is therefore unclear whether each resource is actually needed and how much they can be used more efficiently. Even if it is possible to obtain data on resource usage, it lacks the location context that provides useful information on how, not just the fact, a resource is used.
Real-time asset location systems make it possible not only to obtain data on whether the monitored assets are moving, but also to find out how long they have been in specific zones. After all, one can assume that a forklift moving in the unloading zone was much more productive than one driving around the car park. The data obtained can then be analysed in the context of individual shifts, production steps or a specific order. This enables managers to obtain reliable data to assess the usefulness of individual resources and, as a result, decide whether to reallocate or eliminate them from the process.
3. Reducing unnecessary transport
In our experience, internal logistics processes in manufacturing companies are very often not prioritised and therefore there is usually considerable potential to improve efficiency and reduce waste. For example, by monitoring the movement of forklift trucks during successive shifts, it is possible to identify abnormal behaviour or deviations from the norm which, when accumulated, result in a higher than necessary utilisation of resources.
During one recent implementation, our customer could see that one of the forklift operators was choosing non-standard routes (marked SS - route deviation - in Figure 2), including trips through the warehouse (M). As the forklift's standard route was to travel along the main transport road (K), this means that the decision to drive through the warehouse not only caused potential disruption to the process, but even increased the risk of accidents involving workers not expecting the forklift's presence in the warehouse.
4. Process Monitoring and Analysis Enable Continuous Improvement
Since we can only improve, let alone improve, what we measure, implementing RTLS to understand the actual process flow is a very good first step to implementing Kaizen initiatives. Due to its flexibility, RTLS can be used for continuous improvement of a single complex process or just for experimenting on individual parts of the process.
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.