Manufacturing facilities face many different challenges on multiple levels. Today we’re going to talk about how to meet production goals while maintaining your labor budget within a manufacturing facility.
I recently spoke with a plant manager who shared with me that every day, every shift, it’s something different. Production demands change, supply gets disrupted, too many people call out, and the wrong people call out. The list is endless. And meanwhile, you have to have a successful run every time, every shift, every day.
I also spoke with a regional director who oversaw multiple facilities and he shared that labor is his biggest challenge and he lacks insight. His labor schedulers use multiple spreadsheets. They tried software in the past and it just hasn’t worked. Everyone’s doing something different in each facility. OT is costing more than expected, attrition continues to rise, and younger people just aren’t interested in that kind of work. Plus, the agency labor is expensive.
So what do these problems boil down to? There are challenging production goals, the need to overstaff and maintain the bench to backfill absent employees, relying on agency labor, missed production goals, attrition, and a failure to attract replacements for retirees or employees that otherwise leave.
And what’s the impact of that? Well, you can see missed top-line profit, missed net income, evaporating margin, lost customers, time spent on constant hiring, and time away from the floor within the facility. Supervisors have to spend more time on activities that aren’t related to hitting goals and hitting goals efficiently.
So what’s a possible solution here? Well, what if we had the right person, the right skills, and the right place? What if we eliminated overstaffing, reduced the reliance on agency labor, and had an overall reduction in labor cost? Spend less time and money on hiring, and have a more skilled and experienced workforce. Supervisors spent less time juggling schedules, less time backfilling, and more time focused on production.
Indeavor has a solution that can bring all these things to your organization. What users of Indeavor will find is that they have a more tenured and a more skilled workforce. Plant leaders are able to focus on actual production issues and quality. They see reduced overtime, and reduced agency spending. They have a more skilled and efficient workforce. They have consistent processes across facilities and even within a facility. And they have visibility across lines, departments within a facility, and across all those facilities overall.
Really what it comes down to is making your production goals. While maintaining your labor budget, we’d love to speak with you in regard to what you and your facility are facing and how Indeavor can help.
