Should companies get back to basics & make sure processes are ready to scale or focus on IoT?

The question is this: Why, by a margin of nearly 3:1, are manufacturers implementing cross-functional groups to improve operational excellence, but are not investing in the right tools to deliver needed information to execute change?

In my view, what’s missing is a focus on a fundamental principle of lean manufacturing: Measure current performance to institute continuous improvements in the process. It focuses on decreasing cycle time, reducing inventory, increasing productivity and increasing capital equipment utilization.

The problem is that a lot of manufacturing EMI and dashboarding projects turn out to be more of a science project than a structured approach to making improvements. Typically, organizations start with defining a host of measurements that can be made in order to make process improvements. That’s good. The problem is that each manufacturing site does this same exercise on their own, and without consistency.

The key is to understand what should and shouldn’t be on the dashboard, in order to provide a quick and easy overview for operations personnel to immediately understand what’s going on and to take the right action.

Read the full article at dzone.com