Transforming Manufacturing Intelligence – The Case for Total Factory Visibility
A new report titled ‘Total Factory Visibility: A Clear Path to Ongoing Operational Excellence, Productivity, and Sustainability’ from FourJaw Manufacturing Analytics suggests most manufacturers are “stuck between a rock and a hard place” when it comes to understanding their production environments. Research indicates that less than 1% of factory data is analysed effectively, and that 70% of manufacturers still rely on error-prone manual data collection methods.
These data issues make it almost impossible for most manufacturers to make informed investment and continuous improvement decisions based on a complete, objective and up-to-date view of reality.
FourJaw recommends that manufacturers move beyond fragmented data collection and obtain a small amount of ‘fundamental production data’, core metrics such as utilisation, downtime, and machine-level energy consumption, consistently across the factory floor.
Fundamental production data collection supports Total Factory Visibility (TVF), a unified, real-time view of factory operations to inform investment and continuous improvement initiatives:
Maximising Utilisation to Boost Capacity: By capturing machine utilisation data, manufacturers can identify bottlenecks and underutilised assets. Manufacturers that gain this production insight typically achieve a 30% increase in output capacity within six months, as well as the ability to maintain that new level and even make further improvements on an ongoing basis.
Systematic Downtime Reduction: TFV identifies the root causes of stoppages, enabling manufacturers to address the most significant and costly causes of downtime. Downtime reduction initiatives informed by TFV typically yield productivity gains of 10% in the first year.
Cost Control and Profitability: Precise tracking of machine usage, downtime and energy consumption can be used to refine cost-per-unit calculations. This is essential for accurate quoting, margin protection, and focusing sales and production efforts on profitable work.
Targeted Sustainability and Energy Savings: Machine-level energy consumption data supports efficient ISO 50001 reporting and enables manufacturers to identify unnecessary energy usage and improve energy-intensive processes.
“Amid rising costs and persistent skills shortages, manufacturers cannot afford to base large capex decisions on clipboards, spreadsheets or complex, incoherent datasets. Total Factory Visibility is a framework that cuts through data complexity, enabling manufacturers to see precisely where their time, money, and energy are wasted. This is how you sweat your assets, cut costs and create capacity without capital investment” comments Chris Iveson, CEO of FourJaw Manufacturing Analytics.
For more information: www.fourjaw.com
