Often KPI’s are thought to be only useful in environments which have multiple plants only.  This myth couldn’t be any further from the truth!  In fact KPI’s can be compared within your organization between employees, shifts or managers.    Often an organization may have very agile employees and because they are not outgoing their hard work goes unnoticed.  With KPI software you can compare production rates between employees and allow the most successful employees to train those who may need a little additional assistance.  In the end this will help your organization succeed and you will notice an increase in the overall production.

This instance may be important to organizations running multiple shifts.  For example shift one may be producing at a higher volume than shift three. After reviewing the KPI software reports you realize that the manager on shift three is not as proactive as the manager on shift one.  In this instance it would be beneficial for the organization to have the managers train one another.  The end result will be an increase in production on shift three.

KPI software has many other benefits such as helping those at the corporate level understand the differences between areas or plants.  In the end this software will be beneficial for all involved because you will now know where all in-efficiencies are coming from and can begin to improve on them immediately. 

I hope you found this article to be beneficial.  I would suggest taking a look at the software of many different vendors before making a final decision.  For example Tuppas Software offers some great KPI dashboards that provide great visibility into your production.

While I was researching KPI software services I came across one bit of information that intrigued me – augmentation of existing solutions.  How many software providers actually will augment an existing system which is currently in place at existing plants? This is an interesting point because it can be very hard to find a system that is designed for your specific industry.  Should you find a system that is geared this way it usually provides a rigid structure which means you must conform all of your procedures to the software’s format.  Flexible software providers; for example those that augment existing solutions, allow you to take advantage of continuous improvement.  Not only will you notice more of a continuous improvement your environment will become even leaner. 

These software systems that allow for augmentation have a clear advantage over generic or out of the box software applications.  One primary example is that although industry standards may be similar the internal processes will vary greatly between plants; processes even vary between plants that produce the exact same products.  This wide variety of operations causes the out-of-the-box solutions to fail when they are implemented at the site.  A lack of usability with these systems is also a major fault.  Augmented systems are generally designed in a user-friendly format which uses your terminology. 

Finding a solution like this may be difficult; I suggest taking a look at a few different software providers that will help you design the product for your environment.  Like we said before, no two environments are the same.

Users have the ability to make optimal decisions right at their fingertips because business, operational and production performance KPIs are combined together and can provide near real-time, actionable metrics and KPI.  Some software companies allow for email or text alerts to be sent to users when KPI reach or are close to any pre-defined alarm levels.

Some basic production performance KPIs include OEE (overall equipment effectiveness), scheduled production, quality tracking (more recently known as six sigma), on time orders and shipping, open orders, WIP, cycle time, inventory and forecasts to name a few.
One of the largest advantages of any KPI software includes the ability to give corporate entities to compare performance across multiple areas including products, plants and divisions.  Additionally KPI makes it possible for team members to see where their money makers are located as well as the non profit items.

Usually KPI systems focus on several crucial areas of a manufacturing enterprise. They tend to focus on Production Performance, Quality, Cost/Revenue and Safety. I think that the reason good KPI reporting is necessary is that it can help to keep these different concerns in harmony with one another. All to often manufacturing managers will focus too intently on one of these issues and loose sight of the others if not damage the others. As an example, a manager who is too focused on Production Performance will ultimately often damage quality and even safety and The KPI data if designed correctly will point this out and prevent it.

Another major value in KPI reporting is that it shows you which managers are good at creating harmony in the manufacturing environment. It shows you who needs training and who should be doing the training. I hope that my blog will be a valuable resource on KPI and business intelligence and I hope that you will be able to use it to bring some durable competitive advantage to your manufacturing operation. If you see something you like please let me know I’d love to hear from you.