4 Reasons Your Technical Publications are Killing Your Manufacturing Line Productivity
Whether you’re the owner, the operations manager or the plant manager, your company faces constant pressure to reduce cost of goods sold on a year over year basis.
Manuals, booklets, inserts, labels, and cartons are a commodity and it’s tougher each year to control – and lower – your cost as paper prices and freight costs fluctuate.
Printed materials are a critical component of your business; you can’t ship the final product without it. Sure, they add real value to your product. But they’re also the lowest cost component. You don’t need them taking your time and your mindshare.
You also know that you can never be in a position where these components can shut down your operation… so you’re probably over-buying and holding surplus material. You’re giving these parts of your business more brain power and worry than you should.
Here are 4 reasons your technical publications are killing your manufacturing line productivity.
#1: Obsolete Inventory After Revisions
A part changed, a wiring issue was resolved or compliance changed some wording. Whatever the reason, revisions happen.
The problem comes when these revisions make entire pallets of manuals, diagram printouts or other material obsolete. Because your business over buys so you’re never shut down to due low stock, a revision means lost product.
Depending on your budget, a little lost stock or a lot can hit your bottom line hard.
Obsolescence hurts.
#2: Excess Inventory Cluttering Valuable Floor Space
One of the important parts of your final assembly is the operations literature, no doubt. But it takes up a lot of room (especially when you’re over buying).
What if that valuable floor space could instead be used for value-add manufacturing processes?
This could turn expensive storage space into valuable money-making space. It could also increase efficiency if you’re able to install new equipment to your line you previously had no room for.
#3: Procurement of Low Value but Necessary Printed Components
You or your procurement person most likely spends a lot of time and effort to manage the procurement process associated with these low value individual printed components. In fact, for some manufacturers it’s just as much time, effort and cost as higher value high cost components like circuit boards or precision milled parts necessary to your line.
This unnecessary cost and repeatable process for low value components could be automated or pushed to a vendor, freeing up people and capital.
#4: Administrative Costs of Light Assembly
Whether it’s just a printed manual or, like many businesses you have a kit with spare parts or multiple pieces of collateral, that final piece of the finished product often comes in a bag of some kind.
Your manufacturing line has a team putting your product together – they don’t need to stuff bags or kit extra parts. Having a finished “last component” in one SKU increases efficiency and helps keep administrative costs. Managing that light assembly and those multiple SKUs adds to the bottom line. Cutting those costs with a kitted product would help.
Solving the Issues
Solve these issues by working with an experience partner who eliminates the administrative effort tied up in the management of your printed direct materials. If they work through a secure electronic data interchange (EDI) solution to receive materials, requirements, and plan directly out of your ERP system, they’ll help increase efficiency and decrease costs even further.
They’ll receive the materials forecast and requirements by facility and by part so they know exactly what you need where and when.
Add to the equation a partner who can hold the inventory on their floor and delivering to you just in time (JIT) and on a vendor managed inventory (VMI) and consignment basis, and you’ll save floor space.
Eliminate administrative costs.
Eliminate inventory.
Eliminate obsolescence.
Learn more about one solution with the download below.
