Digital Production Systems – Update

Digital Production Systems – Update

Welcome to our first in a regular series of Iter Digital Newsletters. Hopefully you will find them informative and they will keep you up to date on the latest developments in the creation of a fully digitally managed production system.

Industry 4.0 is now really starting to deliver the transformative effect in the way that our supply chains are structured and operated and how manufacturing processes are controlled. However, the way that our factories are operated, managed and improved through our production systems seems to have slipped under the radar.

Iter Digital is driven by experienced manufacturing and supply chain operators, and we have used this experience to digitise the way that we use and visualise data to drive our daily stand up meetings, structured problem solving processes, Leaders Standard work as well as the way that we assess and improve overall production system effectiveness.

In this first issue we focus on some of the core technology we use, why we have taken that path and how that is transforming the efficiency and effectiveness of the daily stand up meeting process.

This quote from a recent installation at a major tier 1 automotive supplier sums up what we are trying to achieve perfectly:

“Iter’s system enables us to capture and understand data more efficiently. The 80/20 rule is now reversed, allowing us to spend most of our time doing something about the problems we have identified.”

I hope that you find this newsletter useful and we would love your feedback, suggestions and be able to talk to you about how we can take your digital transformation into the core of your day to day production operations.

Case Study

At a leading global supplier of automotive components staff were spending a great deal of time collecting and collating performance data which left little time to understand what the data was saying, or to act upon it. To address this, the business chose Iter’s Virtual Visual Performance Management solution (VVPM) to solve the problem, starting with a Just in Sequence facility in the UK.

Having one system also allowed the business to create daily reports for Quality and MP&L. These daily metrics were collected as part of the routine data collection across departments and aggregated together to create many of the sites’ daily reports.

“Iter’s solution is very flexible and easy to understand and can be moulded into what you need as a business.” – Operations Manager

Iter’s VVPM process has already delivered measurable benefits in:

• Measurable reductions in scrap and improvement in OEE
• Increased engagement and empowerment of teams at all levels
• Stand-up meeting speed and quality, with site meetings that look up to an hour routinely completed, with more tangible outcomes, in 15 minutes

The business has also reported how there is much greater transparency of actions and they are now capturing data at a deeper level with more people involved in data entry than before. In both internal and external audits the system has been identified as best practice.

Technology Background

We chose to implement our Digital Production System, including the Visual Performance Management features, as applications that sit within and on top of the Microsoft 365 platform for a number of reasons.

We feel it is important to many organisations, particularly those working in highly regulated industries, that their data remains within their own environment, subject to all the organisations security and data protection policies. It also allows our solution to leverage the investment organisations have already made in the Microsoft 365 Platform, which a broad set of features many of which organisation are paying for but not using.

While the individual elements of the VPM solution can be accessed as standalone web pages, we always recommend clients deploy the solution using Microsoft Teams. This brings several benefits, as Teams is widely used, so people can quickly access Teams where the VPM solution is hosted and use all the elements of the tool as tabs across the top of a Teams channel. We can also use the power of Teams to show users appropriate content based on the channel they are working in and we can leverage the power of the Teams chat by posting events from the VPM solution into the chat to enhance communication. Using the tool in this way also minimises the number of additional Microsoft 365 licence elements required as the majority of the functions of the tool fall within the scope of the standard Microsoft licences organisations are already paying for.

Demo Opportunity

You can experience our Virtual Visual Performance Management solution through a demo. We’ll give you a tour of the complete approach from fully integrated data entry, visualisation and accountability to a structured problem solving process. It should help you think through the future of daily stand ups.

Just book a 30 minute slot in our calendar and we’ll look forward to sharing insights with you on our call.