Tag Archives: machine uptime

The Professor’s second visit to ACME … continued

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“Well what should we do Professor?” John said weakly. 

“Clearly, not shut the line down over the lunch break,” The Professor responded quickly. 

“We can’t!” said John, “The operators are all friends and they count on having lunch together.” 

“How much are they paid per hour?” asked The Professor. 

“Ten dollars,” replied John. 

 “You can pay them $15 per hour and still make more profit if they keep the line running over the lunch break,” The Professor opined. 

“Fifteen dollars per hour for the lunch time or the entire 40 hour week?” John asked nervously. 

“For the whole week,” was The Professor’s reply. 

“I find that hard to believe,” John shot back.

“Consider this,” said The Professor. “Your line is up only 9.7% of an 8 hour shift, that’s only 47 minutes. Today you lost 95 minutes over the lunch hour. You may be able to increase your uptime to greater than 15% by keeping the line running over lunch. I modeled your business with ProfitPro3.0 cost estimating software. Your company will make millions more per year if you keep the lines running over lunch. I have worked with other companies to make this change; it is really easy with a 30 minute lunch period. If 5 people normally run the line, you have just one stay back during lunch. That way each person only misses the regular lunch break once a week.”

John thought optimistically, “There is such a thing as a free lunch.”

“Now, let’s talk about what we can do to double the uptime from the 15% we will get by running the lines over lunch,” said the Professor.

Patty listened to all of this in amazement. The Professor was helping ACME more than she thought possible.

Next steps? Yes, John will keep his job. But, what is The Professor’s plan to get uptime to 30% or more? And, we still haven’t learned where Patty will go to dinner.  Stay tuned for the latest.

Cheers,

Dr. Ron

Dr. Ron note:  As surprising as this may seem, this story is based on real events. The uptime numbers and improvements are from real examples. Any company that can achieve 35% or more uptime can compete with anyone in the world, even in low labor rate countries. Sadly, few companies know their uptime or have an urgency to improve it.

Best Wishes,



The Return of Patty and the Professor: Uptime Part 2

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Folks,

For the next few weeks I plan to repost some of the first Patty and the Professor episodes. As I visited several facilities, some of them in other industries, I found that uptime is as vital a topic as ever. Although these facilities were tracking a few metrics, uptime was not one of them.  I estimated they were little better than ACME in the following vignette. Let’s all be committed to measuring and improving our processes uptimes. Now on to Patty and the Professor.

Two weeks passed quickly and The Professor returned to ACME. Patty met him at the door. “Professor, it’s great to see you,” Patty said with enthusiasm. “We collected the uptime data in real time on a laptop, no one has seen that results yet. We wanted it to be a surprise,” said Patty. The Professor suggested that he go out on the shop floor to observe the manufacturing activities until shortly after lunch. He pointed out  that his observations may help to understand the uptime results.

The morning seemed to drag for Patty, she was very anxious to see the resets of the uptime data. She bet Pete a dinner for two that the uptime would not be more than 50%. If she wins, Pete and his wife will treat her and her boyfriend Jason to dinner at the restaurant of her choice.

Around 1:30 p.m. The Professor suggested that he was ready for the meeting. Patty had written a simple Excel macro to perform the calculations for the uptime. She only had to push a button and he whole room would see the result in a moment, as Patty connected her laptop to a projector. There was tension in the air, friendly wagers had been made, but the entire process team realized that their reputation was on the line.

When the number emerged on the screen, John, the manager’s face became ashen. Pete’s visage was redder than two weeks ago. John thought, “I should be fired. How could I manage this team for five years and not know that our uptime was only 9.7%.” Patty was thinking about her choice of restaurants.

“How can we be so bad?” John asked The Professor. The Professor responded, “The good news is that there are tremendous opportunities for improvement. After observing the operations out on the floor this morning, I think we can get the uptime to greater than 40%.” Pete shot back, “You’re kidding, only 40%?”

“I’ve only seen two operations that have greater than 45% uptime, and I’ve been to over 150 facilities worldwide,” answered The Professor.

“Where do we start?,” asked John.

“How about lunch?” beamed The Professor.

“We just had lunch!” Pete groaned.

“No, no Pete,” The Professor chuckled, “I mean how lunch is handled out on the line. Lunch costs the company more than 1½ hours of production in an eight hour shift. That’s nearly 20% of the entire shift.”

Now John was a little agitated. “Professor, lunch is only 30 minutes. We purposely have a short lunch period to avoid the line being down for a long time,” John said with a note of annoyance.

“John, this is true, but I watched what the operators did. Lunch is supposed to start at 12 noon, but the operators turn the line off at 11:40 a.m. They don’t get back to the line until 12:40 p.m. and it takes them more than 30 minutes to get the line running again. Today, the line was not running until 1:15 p.m. It was down for 1 hour and 35 minutes,” stated The Professor.

John thought again, “Yes, I should really be fired.”

Will John keep his job? What restaurant will Patty choose for dinner? What should be done about lunch? Where are all of the other hours lost? Stay tuned for the answers to these and other questions.

Cheers,

Dr. Ron