Wireless Mobility Enhances Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma

With today’s high speed of business, no one can be disconnected or isolated.
Mobile employees are critical to the success of your production
operations. They are also critical to your Lean Manufacturing or Six Sigma
program. These employees include material handlers, maintenance mechanics,
plant operators, and others who by the nature of their work need
to move around your plant. They include first level supervisors
and engineering support personnel because
they are often on the move to “go and see” issues in
manufacturing operations. They include those in supply
chain functions for warehousing, delivery and aftermarket
service. This awareness of manufacturing extends
to salespeople to know what is available.
Lean Manufacturing
Mobile technology improves the capability of these constituencies to contribute
to your continuous improvement program. Managing mobile assets
with business processes that are embedded in your IT systems provides
“Business Process Mobilization” (BPMo) that improves your value streams.
Wireless eliminates friction in your business processes to improve execution
in speed, quality and cost. For a Lean Manufacturing program,
examine your value stream maps for process steps that can be improved.
Those steps that were identified as “Non-Value
Added” (NVA) but “required” can often be streamlined
with mobility technologies.
Six Sigma
Within a Six Sigma program, examine the measure
and analyze phases of your DMAIC process. Manual
data collection becomes polluted with data
entry errors. Wireless technology provides flexibility
through improved data collection quantity and
quality for the measure phase of Six Sigma projects.
For the control phase of projects, wireless technology
extends your network infrastructure to include
processes that otherwise could not be monitored.
For example, sensors can be attached to moving parts of equipment for improved
process control and quality. Also, for equipment that is too far from the wired infrastructure where a wired connection is too expensive or takes
too long can be connected now. Your management systems and exception
reports are extended to include the edges of your operations.

If you would like to learn more, ask for the ARC whitepaper.
We can also arrange for a discussion that is specific to your organization.