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The Real Cost of Downtime: An Overview   

In any manufacturing environment, downtime is never something you can fully eliminate – regardless of how hard you try. But so long as these downtime incidents are planned – meaning that you can take proactive steps to mitigate as much risk as possible during these periods – it really isn’t anything to stress out about. 

It’s when downtime incidents are unplanned (and worse, unexplained), that those costs really begin to add up. 

Breaking Down the Costs of Downtime 

According to one recent study, the average cost of unplanned downtime across all businesses came in at a massive $260,000 per hour in 2016 alone. While that number is harrowing in and of itself, when you also consider that it represented a 60% jump from just a few years earlier in 2014, it’s easy to see why this is an issue that needs to be addressed as soon as possible. 

But it’s also important to keep in mind that in some sectors of the manufacturing industry, those costs are even higher. Another study indicated that in the automotive industry in particular, the average cost of unplanned downtime can quickly add up to approximately $50,000 per minute. That adds up to roughly $3 million per hour. 

Maybe the most unfortunate statistic of all is the following: manufacturers on average experience about 800 hours of downtime every single year. 

Are these the types of costs your business can afford to bear right now? Of course not – but thankfully, with the right approach, you don’t have to. 

The Solution: Downtime Tracking 

With a downtime tracking solution like Thrive by your side, you can make sure that your business isn’t anywhere near statistics like those outlined above. Because of its plug and play nature, you can begin tracking machine downtime literally minutes after your activation. Not only will you be able to see the overall efficiency of every piece of equipment across your production line, but you’ll also be in a position to define a reason for ANY stoppage taking place on your shop floor. 

Think about it like this: downtime tracking is about more than just knowing whether or not your lines are running. You’ll know both how efficiently individual pieces of equipment are operating and exactly why they’ve gone offline at a moment’s notice. You’ll be able to track your production line efficiency in real-time and analyze trends according to shift, line or even SKU depending on your preferences. 

What you’re left with is an opportunity to know not only WHY a piece of equipment is offline, but WHAT you have to do to fix the problem and HOW you can prevent it from happening again in the future. At that point, the average cost of downtime simply isn’t something you’ll have to spend much time worrying about any longer. 

If you’d like to find out more information about the real cost of downtime and why this is such an important issue that needs to be addressed across your business, or if you’d just like to talk about your own needs with someone in a bit more detail, please don’t delay - contact Thrive today. 

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When You Bring Your Manufacturing to the United States, the First Thing You Want to Look at is Downtime Tracking

As you begin to move your manufacturing efforts into the United States, it stands to reason that one of your top priorities will be optimizing efficiency across the board. You want to hit the ground running and run the most profitable business that you can – you’re (rightfully) unwilling to let anything stand in your way.

Yet ironically, there are several factors that are potentially doing exactly that – possibly without you even realizing it. If you’re supposed to produce 100 parts a minute and you’re only producing 90, you’re still looking at 10 that weren’t made. Downtime is a situation when your machines aren’t running because of something that wasn’t planned… but that doesn’t always mean your machine was totally offline.

Luckily, these factors are NOT always beyond your control. With the right downtime tracking process in place, you won’t just know WHAT is happening across your lines. You’ll know WHY and, more importantly, you’ll know exactly what you need to do about it to optimize performance and quality across the board.

What Downtime Tracking Matters: Breaking Things Down

At its core, downtime tracking is essential because of the larger goal it helps you accomplish: you need to figure out why you’re not working as fast as you can and should be.

Sometimes it’s because one or more of your machines was offline due to a maintenance issue, yes. But it could also be because your operator has essentially throttled the machine – possibly through no fault of their own. It could also be because of micro starts and stops with the machine that are adding up to far more time than they should.

All three of these problems require vastly different approaches to fix – and you won’t know which one you need to implement unless you know EXACTLY what is happening at a moment’s notice.

With the right downtime tracking solution by your side, you won’t just have a “bird’s eye view” of your company. You’ll be able to measure your actual production output and compare it against your line’s full potential – thus easily tracking shift efficiency or analyzing trends by line in a way you simply couldn’t in the past.

How efficiently does your line produce one product versus another? Do you know what your biggest source of downtime is right now? How can you better prioritize things like equipment maintenance, purchases, and other actionable steps by the result you need to achieve the moment?

The answer to all these questions is simple: downtime tracking.

In the end, downtime tracking is able to unlock the most important advantage of all: the peace-of-mind that only comes with knowing your manufacturing efforts in the U.S. are as efficient as possible without any of the potential downsides that businesses like yours so often deal with.

If you’d like to find out more information about why downtime tracking is the FIRST thing you should be looking at when you bring your manufacturing into the United States, or if you’d just like to schedule your free demonstration to really see what our powerful solution can do, please don’t delay – contact Thrive today.

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Why Quality Tracking is Imperative for Food and Beverage Businesses in Particular

Regardless of the type of business you’re running or even the industry that you’re operating in, obviously one of your biggest concerns on a daily basis is always going to be the quality of the products you put out in the world.

Not only is superior quality a way to create a genuine competitive advantage for yourself, but it’s also the most direct way to keep your customers happy and coming back for more – which may be the most important goal of all.

Having said that, there’s one industry in particular where quality tracking matters more than most. Here, it isn’t just important – it’s mission critical.

Of course, we’re talking about businesses in the food and beverage industry – and this is true for a wide range of reasons, all of which are worth exploring.

Quality Tracking: The Most Important Metric of All

Quality tracking is so important to food and beverage businesses, simply put, because “the cost of getting it wrong” in this context usually means getting people sick.

According to one study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control, an estimated one out of every six Americans get sick from contaminated foods or beverages every single year. Not only that, but about 3,000 people die as a result of this issue.

Too much of the wrong ingredient won’t just change the flavor of your product – it could actually harm a large portion of your target audience. Bacteria, viruses and even parasites, if left unchecked, can easily cause illness and be deadly for people in certain high-risk groups.

All of this is a problem before you even consider the damage to your business’ reputation that will be caused by failing to pay enough attention to this one hugely important idea.

Any business operating in this industry has a responsibility to both protect people and reduce food borne illnesses in the United States and in no uncertain terms, quality tracking is a big, big part of how you do it.

The Future of Your Business Begins With the Quality Tracking Measures of Today

In the end, it’s absolutely true that quality tracking is important for any type of business you can name. But for food and beverage businesses in particular, it’s how you keep people happy AND healthy while they enjoy the products you’ve spent so much time developing.

Obviously, you never want to make people ill (or worse) – but to guarantee that with the level of consistency you need, you must have something a little more effective than just your intuition. Quality tracking is a big part of how you accomplish it and if you haven’t already started to implement these measures across your own production lines, now would be an excellent time to start.

If you’d like to learn even more about why quality tracking is mission critical for food and beverage businesses in particular, or if you’d just like to talk to someone about your own needs in a bit more detail, please don’t delay – contact Thrive today.

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The IIoT is Many Things, But One Thing It Doesn’t Have to Be is Hard

At its core, the Internet of Things refers to a series of sensors and computing devices embedded in everyday objects, allowing them to send and receive data to one another. The Industrial Internet of Things (or IIoT, for short) is an extension of this idea – obviously taking the principles of this concept and applying them to warehouses, factory floors and other environments.

If nearly every device in your business is creating and sharing data in real-time, you suddenly have more visibility into what is really going on than ever before. Mission critical equipment can alert you to a small problem today before it becomes a much bigger one that takes that machine offline next week. You can see the larger context surrounding your supply chain and logistics operations, thus optimizing your resources to do more with less in a way that you wouldn’t have been able to a year ago.

If all of this sounds complicated and difficult, that’s because it is – from a certain perspective. But with the right tool by your side, uncovering the insight contained within all of this new data is easier than you realize. For many, that tool takes the form of downtime tracking software – something that brings with it a host of unique benefits that you cannot afford to ignore any longer.

The Power of Downtime Tracking in the IIoT World

A downtime tracking solution like Thrive has always been an effective way to measure your production line efficiency in real-time. But what you might not realize is that the more data Thrive has access to, the more insight you’re able to generate.

With a tool like Thrive, you’re able to take the information your IIoT devices are measuring and visualize them in a way that makes your plant’s operational effectiveness crystal clear. You’ll be able to recognize your biggest sources of equipment downtime so that you can do something about them immediately, yes. But you’ll also be able to create actionable steps to improve quality and production, save time and eliminate waste – essentially all at the same time.

Not only that, but with production run records and other features, you can easily track shift efficiency or analyze trends by line at a moment’s notice. So from that point of view, not only are you able to embrace the IIoT in a way that improves efficiency and productivity today. With Thrive, you can keep working with that insight and intelligence to improve things even further tomorrow, next week, next year and beyond.

All of this creates a perfect storm in the best possible way for a business like yours. You’re able to virtually guarantee that metrics like availability, efficiency and quality are exactly where they need to be, which ultimately creates better products and better experiences for the customers you’ve dedicated yourself to serving.

If you’d like to find out more information about why the IIoT doesn’t have to be nearly as difficult as you might think, or if you just have any other questions that you’d like to discuss with someone in a bit more detail, please don’t delay – contact Thrive today.

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Yes, OEE Absolutely Fits Into Your Existing Process. Here’s How.  

Original Equipment Effectiveness (or OEE for short) is a key performance indicator commonly used to determine the efficiency of manufacturing plants. The theory is that if you can accurately measure your plant’s operational effectiveness, you can understand what’s working and what isn’t – thus putting in place steps to double down on the former and get rid of the latter whenever you can.

But despite this, far too many people make the mistake of assuming that OEE is more complicated than it is – that it represents a change to “the way things are done” that they just don’t have the time or energy to make right now.

Luckily, this is false. You don’t have to change your existing process to work with OEE at all. In truth, that’s actually kind of the point.

An Organic Approach to OEE: What You Need to Know

Overall, OEE is typically applied to those manufacturing processes that create individual parts – but it can also be used in environments like refineries, too. This is because the type of data being generated by a true OEE implementation is in use practically everywhere – which is exactly why the concept has a home in your current process, too.

While OEE may be incredibly specific by its nature, it’s also a lot broader than people realize. Really, all you’re talking about is the ratio of Fully Productive Time to Planned Production Time. The first term refers to the actual amount of parts or other products that you’re manufacturing in a given period. The second refers to the highest number you can theoretically output during the same timeframe. Therefore, if yours is a manufacturing facility that produces absolutely anything – and of course it is – OEE has a home in your operations.

The difference between those two terms, by the way, is waste – which is also something everyone can benefit from eliminating.

Once you’ve identified your losses even on a single machine, you suddenly have a clearer picture than ever of the performance of your entire line. Thanks to downtime tracking software like Thrive, this is also as easy as you’d hoped it would be. In a matter of seconds after your initial activation, you can be measuring major loss factors like:

  • Equipment Failure.
  • Setups and Adjustments.
  • Idling Periods.
  • Minor Stops.
  • Reduced Speeds.
  • Process Defects.
  • Reduced Yield.
  • And more.

By making an effort to implement OEE into your existing process using Thrive and other tools, you’re not changing anything at all. Rather, you’re gaining more insight into what you’re already doing and are seeing exactly how productive you are versus how productive you can be. You’ll know more than just whether or not your lines are running – any analytical tool can tell you that, as can your own two eyes.

Instead, you’ll know exactly how efficiently they’re performing and exactly how to reduce production downtime – which is an incredibly exciting position for any manufacturing professional to be in.

If you’d like to find out more information about how OEE can effortlessly fit into your existing process, or if you’d just like to see what our innovative downtime management solution can do, please don’t hesitate to pick up the phone and contact Thrive today.

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Want to Reduce Downtime? The Journey Begins By Starting to Track It  

On your average factory floor, instances of downtime could be caused by an unfortunately large number of reasons. Maybe you’re dealing with more micro starts and stops than you realize. Maybe your operator has throttled a machine to the point where it isn’t operating at peak efficiency any longer. Maybe it’s something else entirely.

Truly, it doesn’t matter – what you’re really dealing with is a situation where you’re not working as fast as you should, and you need to know why. Not tomorrow, not next week. Today. Right now.

If you don’t understand downtime within the context of your specific business, you really can’t do much – if anything – to avoid and eliminate it. That’s why if you truly want to reduce downtime (and make no mistake, you should), you need to put a plan in place to track it moving forward.

Downtime Tracking: The Key Tool You’re Not Utilizing Enough

To truly take advantage of your quest to reduce downtime for your business, you need to see it for what it really is: a marathon, not a sprint.

At Thrive, that marathon begins by way of our innovative downtime tracking solution. In minutes, it gives you access to all of the accurate, actionable information you need to not only understand WHAT is happening across your production lines, but WHY. This puts you in an incredible position to actually do something about it in a way that makes sense given exactly what you’re trying to accomplish.

Once you have total visibility into downtime, you can then move onto the next level of your journey – performance. WHY are you only producing 55 products a minute when you should really be producing 60? What is happening to cause that gap? What can you do about it?

Downtime tracking is the key to answering all of these questions as quickly as possible.

At that point, you can tackle the most important part of the journey of all: quality. Regardless of the type of industry you’re talking about, quality is of the utmost importance. Both in terms of keeping people safe (as is true with food and beverage companies) and with regards to carving out a competitive advantage for yourself.

The nexus between downtime, performance and quality tracking is the position that Thrive calls home. Yes, tracking things in this level of detail is difficult because there are so many moving parts at any given moment. But with the right solution by your side – like the one we’ve worked so hard to build – you’ll find that it’s every bit as easy (and dare we say, enjoyable) as you need it to be.

If you want to guarantee that the future of your business is as bright as it can possibly be, in our own humble opinion this is exactly how you do it.

If you’d like to discover even more ways in which tracking downtime can have a dramatic impact on your entire facility, or if you just have any additional questions that you’d like to go over with someone in a bit more detail, please don’t delay – contact Thrive today.

 

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Using Downtime Tracking to Build a Better Future For Your Business

Imagine a scenario where you knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, why downtime was happening on your shop floor. It didn’t matter what you were in the middle of or what machine you were talking about – you could not only define a reason for stoppages, but you could do so in real-time from literally any device in your possession with an active Internet connection.

How much more productive do you think you would be overall? How much better (and easier) would your decision-making abilities get? What would the future of your business be like if you could use this accurate, actionable, and analytical information today to start building from?

Luckily, you don’t have to wonder about the answers to these questions much longer. Your ability to track downtime in this way is here – and it’s a lot easier to take advantage of than you might think. Implementing downtime tracking doesn’t only provide real-time visibility into your production lines but also offers an in-depth understanding of your real-time production status, helping to identify recurring patterns and root causes for inefficiencies. With actionable insights in hand, manufacturers can proactively address problems, reduce waste, and ensure consistent output, which is a crucial consideration when bringing manufacturing operations to the United States.

The Power of Downtime Tracking: The 21st Century Solution for the 21st Century Business

The problem with the way that most businesses handle downtime tracking is that they’re still doing so manually. Sure, this gives them a bit of insight to work from – but they have to travel an incredibly long road to get it.

With a cloud-based downtime tracking solution like the one offered from Thrive, on the other hand, you’re letting modern technology do the work for you. Just minutes after your initial deployment, you know whether your lines are running, how efficiently they’re operating, and exactly how to reduce production downtime across the board.

But more than that, you’re getting unrestricted access to the type of real-time data and reporting that you can use to not only meet your production goals today, but to optimize your operations so that those goals are even more robust and impressive moving forward.

In essence, what you’re really talking about is an unbeatable opportunity to let the past inform the future. You can track your productive line efficiency in real-time, all in a way that lets you analyze trends and patterns that would have otherwise gone undiscovered. You can do so according to a specific shift, a production line or even right down to the SKU.

But the biggest benefit of all is that Thrive’s solution in particular was designed to be every bit as easy as you need it to be. If we even have to do so much as train you on how to use our product, we didn’t build it right. From that perspective, we’re proud of the fact that we’ve finally given you access to the insight and information that you need, all in a way that literally anybody can take advantage of at a moment’s notice.

Truly, downtime tracking’s role in the future of your business doesn’t get much more straightforward than that. By utilizing an operator-friendly downtime tracking system, you ensure that your production processes are not only efficient but also intuitive for your workforce to use, reducing errors and boosting overall productivity.

If you’d like to find out more information about why downtime tracking is the FIRST thing you should be looking at when you bring your manufacturing into the United States, or if you’d like to learn how you can reduce your overtime by pinpointing inefficiencies and improving productivity, scheduling your free demonstration is the perfect next step. Don’t delay – contact Thrive today.

 

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Uncovering the Real Story About Your Business That OEE is Trying to Tell You  

Obviously, every manufacturer out there makes peak productivity a top priority – regardless of what it is that you’re actually manufacturing. If you’re able to produce only the highest quality parts, as quickly as your lines will allow, with little to no stop time to speak of, you’ve done exactly that – which is also what OEE or “Overall Equipment Effectiveness” is all about.

But at the same time, OEE is more than just another metric and it goes above and beyond a standard best practice. It may be one of the biggest sources of insight you have into the opportunities that can improve your manufacturing process. Because if you’re able to dive beneath the data to uncover the true story hiding in plain sight, you have everything you need to identify losses, benchmark progress and more – all at the exact same time.

The True Power of OEE: Breaking Things Down

To get a better idea of all this in action, consider things within the context of one of the most important factors that influences OEE: quality. Any Overall Equipment Effectiveness measurement always takes into consideration something called Quality Loss, which is when you end up manufacturing parts that do not meet quality standards.

Obviously, knowing that this is happening is important. But knowing WHY is the more critical part of the equation and to get that insight, you have to go deeper than just a number on a metric sheet.

Quality Loss could involve scrap and parts that need to be reworked. It could be good parts that weren’t able to successfully move through the manufacturing process for some reason. Those two issues have very different solutions and until you know exactly what you’re dealing with, you don’t know which to implement.

The same is true for availability. Just because your availability isn’t currently 100% doesn’t necessarily mean you have a problem on your hands. You could be dealing with planned stops like changeover time or plant shutdowns, breaks, lunches or even periods when there are no orders. Whether those things are taking longer than they should be is another story, but you can’t discount the fact that they exist altogether.

All of this is a long way of saying that Overall Equipment Effectiveness is every bit as much an art as it is a science. Yes, there’s a tremendous amount of data involved but until you truly understand what that data is trying to tell you, you don’t have access to the insight you need to make better and more informed decisions moving forward.

Once you do unlock that level of understanding, however, you can begin to measure those metrics that are truly important to you. At that point, you’ll have everything you need to improve your manufacturing processes across the board – which is how the competitive advantage that you’ll use to fuel the next decade of your business’ success will be born.

If you’d like to find out even more information about the true narrative hidden beneath your OEE stats, or if you’d just like to talk to someone about your own needs in a bit more detail, please don’t hesitate to pick up the phone and contact Thrive today.

 

 

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How to Implement OEE in Your Workplace  

Generally speaking, OEE (or overall equipment effectiveness) is about measuring manufacturing productivity in a way that makes sense in the context of your unique business. There is no “one size fits all” way to run a factory floor. Only by understanding why you’re experiencing stop time, why you’re not hitting the quality markers you need, and why you’re not moving as quickly as you’d like will you be able to put actionable steps in place to improve things as much as possible.

OEE is an effective way to tackle all of these issues at the exact same time because if you understand your situation, you can measure it. If you can measure it, you can improve it. Thankfully, implementing OEE in your own workplace is fairly straightforward – you’ll just need to keep a few key best practices in mind.

Implementing OEE: An Overview

Overall, implementing OEE in your own business means having access to the tools necessary to generate the insight needed to understand and improve upon those factors outlined above.

But again – no two manufacturing businesses are created equally. For the best results, you need to settle on an approach that works for you and you alone.

This means defining what OEE means to you BEFORE your project begins. What, exactly, are you trying to accomplish? Which issues are you constantly dealing with that you’d like to get more insight on? What metrics matter most to you given your long-term goals as a company? The answers to these questions will absolutely fuel the majority of your decisions moving forward.

Then and only then, you can put into place the types of tools you need to capture the OEE data necessary for the goals you just set for yourself. For many organizations, downtime tracking solutions like Thrive’s will be a lynch pin to this process. It’s a viable way to get a better understanding of why you’re experiencing downtime, sure – but it’s also a core part of how you’ll calculate availability, performance and quality. Those three ideas are at the heart of OEE and you need to put a priority on them moving forward.

Once you have detailed data about downtime, you can dive deeper into why these issues are occurring. Suddenly, things that were once murky become clear and unambiguous in a way that allows you to finally act on this intelligence. You can then do the same analysis of quality and other factors, painting a clearer picture of exactly what you’re dealing with.

At that point, you won’t just know which aspects of your operations are working – more importantly, you’ll know which ones AREN’T. Given that superior level of insight, making improvements requires little more than implementing the right changes at exactly the right time.

Contact Thrive today to learn more about how to implement OEE in your workplace and discuss your specific needs with an expert who truly understands your business.

 

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What Do Tightening Tax Laws Mean for the Resources You Need to Operate, and How Can Downtime Tracking Software Help?

Even though many states are loosening restrictions and are starting to open back up again, the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic are far from over. This is particularly true in terms of the impact on how you’re able to do business – something that probably won’t be “going back to normal” anytime soon.

Thanks largely to issues like COVID-19 surpluses, experts are already predicting that tax laws are going to tighten in the near future. This is true in light of the fact that the federal government has already sent orders and restrictions to regular taxpayers. Some are suggesting that this may actually cut you off from the resources your plant needs to operate at a time when you really can’t afford to have that happen.

Luckily, you do still have an asset that you can depend on – and a powerful one, at that. Downtime tracking software is about to become more valuable than ever before, for several key reasons that are more than worth exploring.

Tax Laws, COVID-19, and Downtime Tracking: What You Need to Know

To speak to the subject of tax laws, one of the most important that you’ll want to pay attention to moving forward has to do with Section 179. This is a provision in the tax law made possible under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that allows business owners like yourself to deduct the full purchase price of qualified equipment from their organization’s gross income.

Likewise, a bonus depreciation of 100% is also available on certain business assets that meet the provision’s criteria, which you can read more about right here.

The good news is that downtime tracking software absolutely falls under that umbrella – meaning that if this isn’t something you’ve already been experimenting with across your enterprise, now would be an excellent time to start thanks to a cost of entry that is far lower than ever before.

But even going beyond that, the purchase of downtime tracking software may very well be your best opportunity to get “back on your feet” once COVID-19 has finally left us behind. At its core, downtime tracking is a viable way to figure out why you’re not working as fast as you should be. You know more than just “I was supposed to produce 500 parts in the last hour and I only produced 400.”

You don’t just know what is happening – you know WHY it’s happening. This provides you with the meaningful, real-time insight you need to actually fix the problem as quickly as possible – thus allowing you to get the most out of the resources you need to operate, regardless of how scarce they may become in the future.

If you’d like to find out more information about what tightening tax laws mean for the resources you need to operate, or if you’re just looking for additional insight into why downtime tracking software can actually help with this issue, please don’t hesitate to contact Thrive today.

Not only will we go over your options about buying out your system, but we’ll also help you write off 100% of that purchase when tax season rolls around yet again!