Techniques

Reduce Costs

This business improvement area is quite dependent on your specific industry and so it can only be discussed here in broad terms.  In outline the areas that we believe deserve consideration are:

  1. Decrease the cost of production by maintaining your current production rate but at a lower direct labour cost, (i.e. increase your production efficiency).  The automation technologies that can help you in this area are Automation, Data Historian, OEE, Machine Vision, Robotics, Workflow, Tracking, Electronic Batch Records & PAT
  2. Reduce your direct costs, (e.g. cost of raw materials, WIP & finished goods inventory).  The automation technologies that can help you in this area are Data Historian, Workflow, Tracking & PAT
  3. Decrease the cost per sales unit by reducing your overheads in areas of energy consumption, (e.g. minimise your use of electricity, gas, oil, water, steam, compressed air, CO2, chilled water, hot water etc.).  The automation technology that can help you in this area is aM&T
  4. Decrease the costs associated with distribution.  The automation technology that can help you in this area is Tracking
  5. Decrease product wastage and the addition of value to product that is already substandard.  The automation technologies that can help you in this area are Automation, Machine Vision & PAT
  6. Maximising the patent life of your product, therefore minimising the time and financial pressures on research & development for new products plus of course maximising the potential income during the product’s life.  The automation technologies that can help you in this area are Data Historian & PAT
  7. Minimising your R&D costs by gathering the salient critical to quality data in a way that can more easily be turned into useful information.  The automation technologies that can help you in this area are Automation, Data Historian & PAT
  8. Minimising your scale up time between development and production by gathering the salient critical to quality data during the R&D phase in a way that enables the determination of thorough process understanding, this being in a form that can be used by production.  The automation technologies that can help you in this area are Automation, Data Historian & PAT

In order to implement any or all of these target areas a systematic approach is required together with a commitment to act.  No matter whether your business improvement system is paper based, automation based or a combination of both, there has to be a will within your company to turn the gathered data into useful information and then act on it.  Unless there is going to be commitment to act then any business improvement system will be to no avail, and the business improvement act itself will be a waste of time and money.  We would suggest that in these days of extreme competitiveness all businesses have to run as efficiently and cost effectively as possible, and so we believe that companies should consider their approach, and then strategically work towards their end goal with each step improving their business and profitability.

To expand your specific opportunities in any of these areas please email or 'phone our sales team using the Contact Us page and we will arrange for a specialist to contact you.