Process Downtime Reduction: How to Minimize Waste from Breakdowns, Set-Ups, Supply Chain Issues, and Staffing Constraints

Maintaining key equipment and processes is essential for manufacturers to improve productivity and increase the bottom line. This book provides techniques to keep critical manufacturing equipment running correctly and efficiently, reducing downtime caused by product changeover, breakdowns, supply chain issues, staffing issues, and downtime internal to the processes. The author also covers how to manage the downtime reduction effort, including measuring downtime, prioritizing which sources to attack first, and monitoring the improvement.

Format: Hardback
Length: 154 pages
Publication date: 15 September 2023
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Among the most significant errors manufacturers commit is failing to maintain essential equipment and processes and producing saleable products when required. This scenario existed when the author Mike Beauregard began working in manufacturing years ago, and it continues to hold true in companies purporting to prioritize Lean. To improve, companies frequently rely on boosting productivity by manufacturing products faster and with greater automation, but many fail to prioritize the area where they can achieve the most significant gains for their efforts: reducing downtime.

This book offers readers the essential techniques they need to maintain their critical manufacturing equipment correctly and efficiently, which enhances production, reduces labor costs, reduces breakdown costs, and ultimately improves the bottom line. Downtime in production lines arises from various sources. While the contribution may be minimal for many of those sources, it accumulates. Downtime and its causes then become the norm, accepted, and unseen by the workforce and management team. Most training courses and books focus on a specific cause of downtime, mainly product changeover (set-up reduction) or breakdowns (TPM). This book addresses these two areas and numerous other sources of downtime, including how to minimize downtime caused by supply chain issues, staffing issues, and downtime within the processes themselves.

In the final chapter, the author covers how to manage the downtime reduction effort, including measuring downtime, prioritizing which downtime sources to attack first, and monitoring the improvement.

Weight: 480g
Dimension: 254 x 178 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781032445496