Are you still in the dark about what exactly causes continual stoppages in your production line? Or why your workforce has a low morale whilst you feel that they are not effectively doing their work? Are you still relying on your gut, some manual process or data from static reports that give you a one sided view?
This no longer has to be the case!
Pragma’s On Key Analytics has proved itself as a champion analytical tool, providing detailed information to get to the root cause of a recurring problem.
On Key Analytics was introduced at a manufacturing client in Port Elizabeth. A problem existed where the fitters at the factory were tied up doing monotonous, non-value adding work. Bobbins, which form part of their automated process, kept on jamming and the fitters needed to continuously move them. This was not necessarily slowing down production, but it reduced man-hours on other scheduled work. The bobbins, with an average weight of 250 kg each, have warped from the constant bumping into one another, resulting in an increase in stoppages.
Stephen Minnie, Pragma Asset Care Engineer says: “On Key Analytics provided the necessary information to determine what was wrong. We started by analysing site sections of the factory, looked at the assets, found the highest contribution of labour hours and came to the conclusion that the bobbins were the culprit.”
In the main factory, the support cell section made up the largest section of the labour hours for non-tactical work at 2 497.7 hours. “The number of work orders showed that the jobs were not quick fixes, but recurring problems. Analytics highlighted that the largest contribution to labour hours spent was the bobbin buffer at 1 610.4hours. We further realised that 99.92% of the work done on the bobbin buffer was reactive work. This was an alarming factor as the work being performed was not due to a breakdown, but rather due to a problem on the equipment that could potentially cause a stoppage. The majority of work orders against the bobbin buffer reflected ‘unjammed bobbins’ as the work required and performed. The calculation was staggering. Over a period of 5 months, 1 610.4 man hours (at a rate of R100 per hour per artisan) resulted in R161 040 being spent on reactive labour. This does not take into account the time lost for artisans to perform preventative maintenance activities.”
With these figures at hand, the client could make a well-informed decision to redesign the bobbin buffer, resulting in
- freeing up fitters to perform their core functions,
- boosting the morale of the work force,
- saving on money spent on unnecessary labour, and
- reducing the risk of injuries.
Minne concludes: “On Key Analytics currently have two modules available, namely Maintenance Administration and Work Order. We used the Work Order module’s data mining capability to dig down and find the root cause of why there was so much labour time at the client.”
If you find yourself in a situation where your current reports are not giving you the detail that you require to do a calculated root cause analysis, you can give Pragma a call to introduce you to On Key Analytics.
