At its core, downtime tracking doesn’t just help you better understand the current state of the equipment in your manufacturing facility. It also helps you gain visibility into what that equipment is capable of, and what the potential is when you get as close to peak productivity as possible.
The more information you’re tracking, the more insight you have – and the better choices you can make in terms of optimization.
According to one recent study, it’s estimated that about 70% of all organizations don’t actually know the full extent of their unplanned downtime events. They may know that they have an issue, but they’re not sure why – which means they can’t prevent it from happening again.
Thankfully, downtime tracking solutions like those available from Thrive can help relieve that issue – provided that you pay attention to a few key attributes along the way.
Harnessing Downtime Tracking to Your Advantage
To make sure that you’re deriving the most value from your downtime tracking software, you need to be as detailed in terms of the data that you’re collecting as possible. This means that in addition to capturing the process area or specific line where the downtime event occurred, you also need to make a note of things like the machine itself as well.
Equally important are things like the product that was being worked on at the time of the event. Sometimes, it’s not so much a matter of an issue with the machine as it is an issue with the process itself.
Of course, the length of the event is also paramount to helping better understand what is going on. If you know when an event happened and when it was eventually corrected, you should be able to see this number get shorter over time as you make steps to improve. Operator comments will be equally important to that end, as they can help provide additional insights into an event including what the conditions were and what steps were taken to ultimately fix the problem.
Overall, downtime tracking is about painting a more complete picture than you can arrive at on your own. It’s not just about what happened – it’s about who was involved, when the event occurred and where it took place. All of these help answer the most crucial question of all: “why is this issue happening?” Is it a one-time affair, or is it recurring? What is the context surrounding the issue? Once you’re able to answer those questions, you have nearly everything you need to emphasize continuous improvement across your manufacturing lines – leading to greater efficiency and even greater profits as well.
If you’d like to find out more information about the key attributes that you should be paying attention to in order to get the most out of your downtime tracking efforts, or if you’d like to speak to someone about your own needs in a bit more detail, please feel free to contact Thrive today.
