Innovation in a Zero Capital World
Posted on Mar 16, 2009 by john Zegers, Director COI for Manufacturing |
I came across another insightful article today in Industry Week. It discusses ways to improve the bottom line and innovate without capital expenditures. Use your employees to find opportunities to improve.
As stated in the article, two groups in particular tend to contribute most improvement ideas are production and maintenance workers. By interfacing on a daily basis with the various processes, production workers often learn how to create solutions that allow processes to become more efficient. Maintenance workers find solutions to common problems that require the most frequent maintenance calls.
For Example: A production worker mentions to the new engineer that the furnace seems to be using too much nitrogen purging gas during a cycle. The engineer mentions the complaint to others and is told that the worker is always complaining about something. However, the engineer investigates, then corrects the problem and finds significant nitrogen savings.
Savings: $250,000 per year Cost: Engineering time
Read entire article at www.industryweek.com.
Tagged: industry week, innovation, process improvement, manufacturing innovation
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