How To Set Up a Step-By-Step Process Manufacturing Improvement Plan

Do you want a process improvement plan for your factory to improve quality, reduce cost, and deliver on time? You might also be wondering, ‘how do I go about implementing it?’'

We will be breaking down a step-by-step guide to help you implement an effective process improvement plan at your facility. There are several process improvement approaches – with the most popular ones based on the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle and the Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control (DMAIC) sequence.

In this article, we’ll explain how to use a framework that is derived from Toyota’s practical problem-solving process, which contains 14 underlying principles summarized into these four points:

1. Maintain a long-term philosophy.
2. Having the proper process will help produce the right results.
3. Add value to your organization by developing people.
4. Continuously solve root problems to drive both organizational learning and operational improvement.

But first, let's look at how we define process improvement.

What Is Process Improvement in Manufacturing?

Manufacturing process improvement is a proactive, well-documented technique to find the inefficient processes within your existing operations. Existing business processes are identified, analyzed, and then improved. Simply put, the definition of process improvement is examining your organization and determining how you might improve things.

5 Continues Improvement in Manufacturing Steps for Your Factory

1. Clarify Your Goals

• Improve quality
• Reduce costs
• Increase capacity
• Reduce lead times
• Improve ergonomics and safety

2. Collect and Analyze Data

• You want to increase capacity. Do you think that you only need to improve the equipment uptime?. In reality, what is constraining your capacity are your assembly, testing, and packing activities.

• You want to improve quality. You think adding a few inspectors will do the trick? But 70% of the defects on your finished products come from a process after which no re-work is possible (the parts have to be scrapped). Your process improvement plan should target that process.

Look At Accurate Data for Quality Manufacturing Improvement Planning

• Quality inspection reports (including those from your incoming QC team, and so on);
• Corrective action plans, or 8Ds, requested from customers;
• Equipment stoppage records;
• Productivity data (i.e. number of labor hours per unit);
• Utility consumption data;
• Suggestions for re-engineering, for example, from a consulting firm like CMC;
• Shipping records (estimated ETD vs real ETD);
• Past project management records (plan vs real, for instance, in Microsoft Project);
• Safety incident records.

3. Get Down to The Root Cause of The Main Issues

Once you have your finger on an issue, go down to its root causes. We often see pseudo-root causes such as “operator made a mistake,” which call for pseudo-solutions such as “retrain the operators”. Don’t fall into that trap.

You can’t build a process improvement plan without digging deeper into what caused the mistake in the first place. Is it related to the number of hours the operators are working? The tools they have at their disposal? Any issues within the production process?

Again, let’s look at an example:

Process Improvement Plan Example: Do You Have Many Rejects in Production?

Cause #1: some suppliers ship bad products.
Cause #2: some parts pass the incoming inspection but should be rejected.

Let’s get down to the root of cause #1. Some suppliers ship bad products because they can’t and won’t meet the tolerances. The supplier's selection process does not include verifying their capabilities and does not ask them to commit to respecting specific tolerances.

4. The Process Improvement Manager Needs to Set Clear Goals

Before you write a plan, you nmust know how far and fast you want to go. Let’s take a look at an example:

• If you want to increase productivity by 6% every year, you can focus on minor changes in the layout and the tools. You can also train the local leaders to work in a certain way, improve the internal logistics system, and you will have time to see how your plan works and therefore iterate as needed.

• If you want to increase productivity by 40% in 6 months, you probably can’t act at the margin (around the existing processes). You will need to rethink the way operations are planned and executed from the ground up, and you may need to redesign the product. The engineering effort and the capital expense necessary to reach that target will probably be much higher.

5. Plan for Counter-Measures

Many people skip the other process improvement steps and go directly to this one. By now, you should understand why it is a mistake:

• The plan should address the major root causes. Otherwise, the improvement won't move the needle and won't 'stick' in the long run.

• You need to involve people. Let them agree on the root causes, and then the counter-measures will often be logical. Hopefully, you have people’s buy-in, and there will be less resistance.

• You need improvement targets to know how fast and how far you need to go.

Improving Manufacturing Processes: Plan & Implement