Hi Yngwie
I am not sure where you are trying to go with your questions, but it appears you are looking for a way to monitor how productive your production lines are running. With the assumption that these are SMT lines your are running you should first measure how many components are being placed per hour, per 8 hour shift, and per week. All this data should be able to come from the computer on the pick and place machine.
If you put this data in a spread sheet you can create a simple bar chart by the hour showing the peaks and valleys of output. Now measure how long it takes to complete a changeover between P/N�s. Now compare the bar chart valleys with the down time you measured they should match. Now you have a simple tracking system.
As you make improvements to your line such as reducing feeder changeover time by prestaging feeders, double checking that you have the right components ready for the machine, making sure the operators are ready immediately when one job is complete to change to the next. All these things will make dramatic measurable improvements to your productivity, we see 20%-40% improvements frequently. There are many more things to do but to long to list here. Also the process should continue throughout your factory to the shipping door.
This should not be complicated although there are many ways that will make it very complicated, keep it simple.
Also, industry standards regarding productivity in this area are very tough if not impossible to find.
Every plant is different and the ability and speed or productivity will vary. The trick is to keep working on increasing the throughput and output of yours and tracking your improvements as mentioned above, if you make a change in the process and you see no improvement in the output generally that will tell you to keep looking for the bottleneck somewhere else. the end result is more productivity. Hope that helps. If you would like more info, feel free to contact me offline.
Ken Bliss Bliss Industries kbliss@blissindustries.com
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