An adequate calculation of manufacturing efficiency in the food and beverage sector can reduce scrap material, reduce costs, increase performance, improve productivity and maximize the use of expensive raw materials.
When making this calculation, those responsible for food production seek, in most cases, to achieve the most appropriate practices to increase this efficiency and, with it, improve their productivity, an objective that would become unattainable if the quality of that production entails higher costs, reducing the profit margin.
Therefore, to make an appropriate calculation of manufacturing efficiency in the food and beverage sector, the ideal is to measure said efficiency in all production lines, which is developed in stages, beginning with the identification of the KPI's. .
First, you must identify the key performance indicators in each part of that production. For example, there is a KPI such as production rate, which is measured in strokes per minute or by the number of dumplings that go through a specific band every minute.
In this food and beverage sector, the KPI's to be measured must be chosen intelligently. In the case of a beverage production factory, the measurement of efficiency is carried out on the basis of hectoliters, which are generated from time to time, that is, for example, they can be hectoliters per hour or per day.
Beverage producing companies measure their efficiency in this way, as well as make a measurement of the events that are occurring, such as strikes that occur and stop production.
The measurement of key performance indicators, in situations like this, is done based on the time it takes them to restart after an unscheduled shutdown.
This means that maintenance stoppages must also be taken into account because they affect manufacturing efficiency. The problem that companies in the food and beverage sector currently have is that every time a stoppage of this type occurs, they use an inaccurate method, such as writing down the data on paper, indicating the duration of said stoppage and little else.
This stoppage, for example, is assigned to the maintenance department, when perhaps, with a totally precise tool, this production stoppage could have been avoided, for example, with the implementation of eventual or scheduled maintenance stoppages.
What can technology do to measure efficiency in industrial plants?
There are generic formulas that would allow production plants to calculate manufacturing efficiency in the food and beverage sector, but without the Technologies to improve the performance of food production in the Spanish industry that can be fed with these formulas, it would not be possible to achieve the precision that is required.
This means that the participation of a technological partner trained to make the necessary adaptations according to the type of company or process, is essential so that these tools can make the formulation allow, later, to obtain the appropriate reports for decision making.
The chosen technology will make the efficiency calculations, as long as there is a strategy behind that adapts these tools so that it works properly with each manufacturing company, which could even have its own formulation. In this way, it is guaranteed that the automated production reports allow the plant manager to develop a growth plan based on productivity.
One way to know the efficiency of an entire process, or an entire line, is to divide it into smaller sections and identify the potential for each of these processes or machinery, which in some cases are called work cells. that cell, a data with which a projection can be made.
For example, if the ideal production of a machine is 100 units per hour, the calculation of manufacturing efficiency in the food and beverage sector will be made based on the comparison of current production with ideal production.
How can SINCI calculate manufacturing efficiency in the food and beverage sector?
To make this possible, we do an integration of all the cells or processes to later obtain a definitive calculation that gives us information about the entire line and what it should produce to reach profitable figures.
This allows companies in the food industry to obtain a quality product, since these figures also show the amount of scrap material, a data that facilitates decision-making to reduce it with quick actions.
As the first step is to identify the efficiency KPIs, SINCI carries out a technical survey to learn about the reality of food production plants, and discover the points or stages in which there are line stoppages or problems.
In general, companies in the sector do not have this information precisely since it is collected by hand, with which we designed a strategy to add our software tools that, with the data entered by the production manager of each company, It is possible to make an accurate calculation of the manufacturing efficiency, be it of a line, a process or a product.
The work of SINCI® begins from the very implementation of process control and information control solutions, such as solutions for measuring efficiency in industrial plants, which allow companies in the food industry to identify opportunities for improvement, by having accurate data that helps improve decision-making by up to 30%.
