Learn How One Hour and A Few Questions Made $1 MILLION DOLLARS
Many transformational changes start extremely small, so small that the executives at the top might not realize anything has been done.
That is, until one day they suddenly realize the bottom line is MUCH larger.
Facility:
A midsized OEM manufacturer.
Setting the Stage:
Facility X had many LARGE industrial furnaces. One of these furnaces was recently “upgraded.”
As with many such upgrades, it was a rip and replace process, with the end goal of “make it look exactly the same as the old one.” No one considered making any changes or improvements.
The Conversation:
Watching the operator go through the process of starting a load, we noticed one thing: they were pushing SO MANY buttons. Not only that, they were pushing a lot of the same buttons repeatedly.
How many of the same buttons?
14 buttons, every time they needed to run a load!
14 buttons, 10 times a day, 6 days a week, 50 weeks a year.
That’s 42,000 button presses per shift per year!
The Solution:
After confirming that we could change that to a single button press without disrupting anything… we did!
The whole process took less than an hour from start to finish.
The Results:
A couple of amazing things happened.
1) We were able to increase the runs from 10 per shift to 11 per shift.
For a company that was capacity constrained and in the process of a multi-year CapEx, planning, and building, this was a huge win for their ROI.
2) Guess who was the operators new best friend? Yup, no easier way to ingratiate yourself to the shop floor than to help make their jobs easier and less monotonous.
As an upside, we also earned some capital as we were leading them through a series or large scale organizational changes.
The Return On Investment:
Facility X was now able to run 300 additional loads per shift per year.
Over three shifts, that’s 900 additional loads processeed. 90 days worth of additional output.
All done on existing equipment with existing employees.
All done in less than an hour.
Over the lifetime of this project, Facility X will see more than $1 Million dollars in ROI.
The amazing thing: they had more than one furnace. . .
So ask yourself: What could your facility do with an additional three months (OR MORE) of run time each year?
Want to learn more about Digital Transformation? Check out The Ultimate Digital Transformation Quick Start Guide!
