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Improve Yields, Minimise Downtime, Eliminate Coding Errors, Reduce Wastage

News and Updates

Conformance to Plan

Most successful companies put their customers at the forefront of their business operations. The FMCG supply chain is no exception, with Conformance to Plan being the Number One measure.

Any company that does not deliver its goods to its customers on time, every time, should not be surprised at the loss of future business prospects, the loss of existing customers and even significant penalty costs for missed deadlines.

One way to achieve the Conformance to Plan objective is to fulfil the objective whatever it costs. Noble as this objective is, it is not usually sufficient to ensure future prosperity and growth. So not surprisingly, most companies are now looking for ways to achieve Conformance to Plan, whilst maintaining or even reducing targeted unit costs.

Easy to say...hard to do?

Not with the right information in the right hands at the right time, supported by appropriate training and knowledge transfer.

· Getting the order for your products is the first step.
· Maintaining those customers whilst creating availability to handle new orders is the next step.
· Ensuring Conformance to Plan is essential in all cases, but the real challenge is how to continue to meet these primary objectives, whilst manufacturing products more quickly and at lower cost.

Information is absolutely crucial, but that information must be available in real time, accurate and prioritised so as to achieve the maximum possible with minimal resources.

‘The better the information the better the actions'

The Harford Compliance Plus programme is uniquely important in that it helps FMCG manufacturers to achieve these combined objectives, beginning with Compliance first (to ensure that what goes out stays out, and the only thing that keeps coming back is customers) and then to take advantage of the opportunities for reduction of cost and improvements in overall profitability.

Compliance combines quality assurance, materials management, legal metrology, together with packaging and coding conformance

Plus includes downtime analysis, line efficiency, OEE, reduced wastage and improved resource utilisation.

Though its extensive tool kit the Harford solution will encourage analysis of machine breakdowns into frequencies and priorities by cost and time, to encourage strategic improvements in planned maintenance programmes with reduced reliance upon effectiveness of fire-fighting.

Substandard raw materials would be found on delivery through active use of the incoming goods tool kit and quality modules. This monitoring would ensure that only materials of acceptable quality are taken into stock.

In busy production environments, with considerable numbers of SKUs, product variables and frequent changeovers, it is easy to see how things can go wrong.

From our experience we have learned that the three main reasons things go wrong are
1. Loss of awareness
2. A taking of shortcuts
3. Errors of judgement.

Because one or a combination of these three things cause most operator errors, we have built controls and alerts into the Harford factory floor and information management suite to ensure the elimination of such errors at every possible opportunity.