Productivity Problems

The increased competition of emerging countries and the rise of the Canadian dollar are major factors in the corporative landscape that reduce competitive advantage. Managers involved in dealing with these factors must understand that their organizations must constantly improve or perish.

To battle this, one of the most important elements to improve is productivity. Traditionally, companies attempt to improve productivity either by investing in automation; by purchasing more powerful equipment or by carrying out a reorganization of workstations.

It is, however, possible to obtain important increases in productivity with more modest investments, while also motivating the employees in their work. Particularly in the reduction of activities with no added value using the methods such as Lean manufacturing and Kaizen approaches.

Several studies have shown that the percentage of value added for a typical operator accounts on average to about 25-30% of his time. The remainder is in operations consisting of non-productive activities such as movements, waiting, error correction, handling and other sources of waste.

Bell Nordic proposes several methodologies which make it possible to reduce activities while increasing the quality of the work as well as the productivity of your company.

Among these methods are:

Value Stream Mapping (VSM)

Shop Floor Analysis

Cellular manufacturing

5S workshops

Set-up reduction workshops (SMED)

Six Sigma projects

Coaching of supervisors

Process Mapping