Four Ways to Better Production Efficiency for Medical Devices

Introduction

Imagine what you could do with instant, accurate machine data and process information directly from the machine. Even depth and dimension is within reach with the help of a manufacturing execution system (MES). Medical parts, supply and equipment manufacturers use MES for real-time production monitoring and analysis to improve throughput, boost quality, and reduce scrap. You can achieve more capacity with the same machines and improve overall equipment effectiveness (OEE)—working more efficiently and profitably.

This white paper highlights four ways to boost your performance with the right manufacturing execution system.

The Steps

Step 1: Manage Family-of-Parts Tools and Molds

Managing tools and dies can be a real challenge, especially for family molding. It gets easier with an MES designed to handle these complex scenarios. When an MES is designed for scheduling, cost reporting, and monitoring scrap across individual parts within a family, you achieve better control and the greatest possible efficiency. Manufacturers in the healthcare sector that use family molds should be able to use their MES system to automatically pinpoint and resolve tooling conflicts, efficiently manage color change requirements, produce uneven batches, and identify and scrap individual pieces. With the right MES system, you can plan in a proactive fashion and eliminate unnecessary wait time and inefficiencies.

Step 2: Focus on Process and Quality Control

A quality control focus is crucial to ensure you ship high quality parts to your customers. It’s no longer enough to simply collect real-time production data of your manufacturing operations, you also need to analyze the process conditions of your production, in real time, to prevent bad parts from being produced and shipped to customers.

Make sure the MES you’re evaluating includes comprehensive Statistical Process Control (SPC) features that help you analyze important process conditions, and provides alerts when process conditions are out of tolerance. This way you’ll have full and immediate traceability back to the root cause of your quality issue.

SPC reduces bad parts produced and improves quality by collecting data from samples at various points within your process. Variations in the process that may affect the quality of the end product can be detected and corrected, thus reducing waste as well as the likelihood that problems will be passed on to the customer. It has an emphasis on early detection and prevention of problems.

Step 3: Rely on Real-Time Information

Your system should provide accurate 24/7 real-time manufacturing information of all your plant operations. By gaining access to this information, you will be able to reduce scrap, waste and machine downtime, improve your cycle times, Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), plant productivity, and automatic part qualification. A proper MES system will enable you to become proactive, and help anticipate and solve manufacturing problems before they occur. Identifying resource inefficiencies lets you do more with your existing resources and find new capacity.

Step 4: Eliminate Manual Processes

Collecting production data manually is time consuming and error prone. With no access to real-time data, you might produce bad parts for some time before you realize it. Halting production to find the bad parts and the root cause can result in significant costs.

Conclusion

If you’re ready to find more capacity and do more with your existing resources, and anticipate and solve manufacturing problems before they happen, then it’s time to evaluate your manufacturing execution system options. The best MES system for medical parts, supply and equipment manufacturers is one that captures production and process data directly from the machine, provides depth and dimension of information, and delivers accurate, real-time production analysis.

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