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Installation and Adoption Timeline
This article walks you through parts of the Adopt the System phase of this plan!
Internal Tasks
Tasks with Amper
🪜First Steps! Start Using Amper Tactically
Before you pick up a project, set up this system below to get immediate value with your data! It’s low cost and low effort and can yield BIG results!
Have you heard of the Hawthorne Effect? This is the idea that what gets measured, improves. We've seen customers increase their utilization by 20% through the Hawthorne Effect alone! Check out how Global Precision Parts did it in this case study.
In addition, visual management in general can help identify current issues, allowing you to react and fix them before it's too late. Red, yellow, and green colors can easily communicate to anyone: "If something isn't green, go fix it!"
Let’s get visual!
Get a Baseline → Set up Scoreboards → Look at Reports → Include Amper in GEMBA Walk
1. Get a Baseline
Gather enough data to understand your current state and starting point before attempting any projects
Example Current State Metrics
- Utilization
- This can be in % or Hours
- Paid Labor Utilization - See Improve Paid Labor Utilization
- Late Starts & Early Stops Times - See Late Starts Early Stops
- This report has Late Start & Early Stop Times at the top XX:XX:XX read in Hours: Minutes: Seconds
2. Scoreboards
Have scoreboards on the factory floor where operators and supervisors can see their performance throughout the day.
Amper's
Scoreboards are intended to be displayed on a TV screen on your factory floor. Why? Because it is a quick and easy way to increase machine utilization each day! By setting realistic goals for operators to achieve and displaying scoreboards throughout the plant, you empower them with the knowledge to affect those numbers.
3. Reports
- Set a reporting cadence to go out to all levels of the team
Amper’s Best Practice Reporting Structure- Receive the “Utilization Detailed” report for Yesterday daily.
- Review how yesterday's shift went based on utilization and uptime.
- Identify the top utilization by machine, cell, and shift.
- Address any high-level concerns during daily meetings.
- Also receive the “Daily Utilization and Downtime” Report showing Yesterday and QTD information
- The report will automatically filter the left side to show yesterday's numbers and the right side for QTD information.
- Compare up and down hours, as well as utilization for yesterday and QTD.
- The bottom of this page also displays year-to-date (YTD) up hours.
4. GEMBA walks
Start doing GEMBA walks in areas with Amper!
The Hawthorne Effect is when people will change their behavior simply because they are being evaluated or know they are being watched.
Perform this for a month or even a full quarter, and compare your utilization to when you first started.
Unsure what Gemba Walks are? Check out this article → The Essential Gemba walk Checklist
- If you have a large factory and are short on time you can:
- Shorten the walk: Do a different cell each day of the week
- Split up the resources: Have supervisors do small walks just in their own areas
- Space them out: Have a weekly or monthly walk
🥇Recommendations for First Projects
Each of the projects below uses one of the many tools Amper has to offer.
First Project Examples: With No Operator Entry
Address down machines in a timely manner - Know what's happening on the floor and take action with Alerts - Top 5 Ways to Use Alerts
- Time commitment: 10 minutes to set up Alerts
- Features Required: Alerts
Save time by receiving notifications as soon as something happens, instead of waiting for communication to come to you.
We have the following alert types available for configuration:
- Machine Down
- Machine down (Cumulative)
- Downtime Reason Entered
- Setup Over Target
- High priority Maintenance Request
Use automatic Alerts - but only for the machines you really care about.
To avoid getting overwhelmed with text messages or emails about downtime, many customers will setup alerts ONLY for their hottest machines.
This is great for:
- Supervisors
- Managers
- GMs
- Schedulers
- Expediters
- Shipping
- Know when your high runner goes down immediately!
- Get an average downtime over the last 30 days
- Put this alert in place and measure the average downtime again in 30 days
- If there is an improvement in time you have success
Reduce downtime due to excessive Lunch/Breaks with Downtime Rules - Downtime Labeling Rules
- Time commitment: 10 minutes to set up the Downtime Rules
- Features Required: Downtime Labeling Rules
Amper’s Downtime Rules automatically label consistent downtime for your operators
Recommended Downtime Rules to set up
- Break/Lunch
- Daily or Weekly Meetings
Set up Downtime Reason Codes → Set up Downtime Rules → Review the Gathered Data
If you see downtime before and/or after the scheduled time you know your operators are taking longer time than given and action can be taken
Take action!
- Measure daily and address overage right away
- Stagger lunches and breaks to keep the machines staffed
- Keep a clock in the break room and an alarm when there are 5 mins left to go back to the machines
- Find the top machines with these issues
- Measure Utilization before and after changes were made
- Claim savings!
- This is a great first step towards Downtime Labeling. Once this data becomes consistent, consider having your operators label other downtimes as well.
Improve time-to-first-production by using the Late Starts Early Stop Dashboard
- Time commitment: 30 min weekly to review
- Features Required: Turned onLate Starts Early Stops
- This report can be found Under the Dashboards Tab
- Set up a weekly report of the last 30 days to review how your trends are going
- Great for Operations Managers and GMs
- Set up a daily report of yesterday to address any immediate concerns - see your top and bottom performers from yesterday
- Great for Supervisors and Team Leads (You can filter by machine or cell that each person wants to see)
- Once you have collected data for a few days you can see where trends start to develop and discuss internally steps to improve this
- Make sure operators are coming in on time
- Push morning meetings and standups to later in the morning to get the machines up and running
- Start machines for warm up right away before completing other house keeping tasks
- Overlap shifts to allow operator to clean while the machine is being manned by someone else
- Prep needed materials for the day/shift before
- Run the Late Starts Early Stops report for the last 30 days.
- Take the average Late Start and add it to your Early Stop to get a total amount of downtime per machine each day due to this issue
- Make improvements
- Perform analysis again for a new 30 day timeframe after the improvements are made
- Subtract the 2nd 30 days from the 1st 30days and that is how much time you saved on average per day per machine
- Multiple that time by your hourly cost - that will be the amount you saved per day per machine
- Multiple that by the days you worked that month and number of machines. That will be your total cost savings for the month
First Project Examples: With Minimal Operator Entry
Improve communication with Call Teams
- Time commitment: 10 minutes to set up Call Teams
- Features Required: Call Teams and a Tablet
Have a base line → Set up Call Teams → Use Call Teams → Measure
- Set your baseline or know where it is as
- Set up Call Teams under Alerts > Call Teams
- Train Operators how and when to use the call button
- Review the data under Explorer > Call Response
- See Data like, Which Teams Respond to Calls, # of Unresolved Calls
Do you have downtime due to waiting? Waiting on a person, department or material? It's possible this is a major downtime reason, and you may not even realize it!
Any time your operators are waiting on something, they should be able to call for it, instead of walking away from their station to find it. You can do exactly that with our Call Team feature.
- First, determine what exactly it is your operators are waiting for. Is it material, maintenance, their supervisor, quality? Possibly all 4?
- Work with your CSE to set up your Call Team button and add your teams to it.
- Train your operators on how to call for help, and check over time to see how your overall utilization increases!
Improve Safety/Communication by using a Safety call team.
Set up a Safety Call Team > Use the Button > Measure
- Create a call team specifically to report safety issues
- Reduce downtime due to safety issues
Connect Operations with Engineering
- Create a Call Team for Engineering or Supervisors
- This can be the Engineer that is charge of the Part or a Supervisor to help the operator with challenges
- This approach helps operators who need to get the machine up and running, and holds everyone accountable for their work.
- Your Operators will feel heard and empowered as well as saving time when they can call for help from their station and see who is responding
- You will be able to see how long it takes your team to respond to calls
Create an end-of-day cleaning list with Maintenance Tasks
- Time commitment: 30 min - 1 hr to create Maintenance Plans
- Features Required: Maintenance
- Work with your team to establish a list of end of shift cleaning tasks
- Create Usage or Calendar based maintenance Plans: Creating Maintenance Plans
- This will help eliminate the need to track this on a paper system.
- Pick your Timeframe: Every day or every 12/10/8 Hours depending on your shift
- Select "Do not require approval" for this task.
- The task will appear on the Maintenance tab of the tablet.
- Instruct your operators to click "Done" each time they complete a task. They can check the steps in the info drill-in for reference.
- Look at to ensure tasks are being completedMaintenance Analytics
- Ensure Operators are doing their maintenance tasks. You can track which operators have completed these tasks and when, using the Maintenance Analytics tab.
- When reviewing the machine through these daily tasks, other future issues can be identified and remedied. For example, topping off the oil every day can prevent motor burn outs.
- You can measure whether your utilization increases before and after implementing this structure. Presumably, the machines will experience less unplanned downtime as a result.
- Ensure that all your operators perform the same tasks to create continuity across the floor.
First Project Examples: With More Operator Entry
Locate your largest Downtimes and Improve
- Time commitment: 10 Minutes to Set up Codes, 30 min to train operators, weekly time to review
- Features Required: Downtime labeling turned on
Start Downtime Labeling → Review Data → Make Improvements
Amper Recommends These 3 Simple Projects to Start with for Downtime Labeling:
- See how much time is actually going to Break/lunches
- If operators are taking more than allotted time then add additional reasons,
- We recommended having “Planned Break/Lunch” which can be removed from Performance Metrics and a “Unplanned Break/Lunch”
- You can view this by Machine or Shift and take action where needed
- To go one step further you can add a so Operators do not have to label their own “Planned Break/Lunch”Downtime Labeling Rules
- Start tracking time lost to Set up with Downtime Reasons
- You can compare setup times by Machine/Part/Operator/Shift if you’re using Tally Sheets
- Take it a step further and use our set up module to ensure all steps are being done on time with alerts
- Start Tracking when machine is down because there is no work
- If there is no work and open time during shift, you may justify not getting more machines. But you may just need more sales.
- If there is no available capacity during the working shift, it may be justifiable to add an additional shift or purchase additional machines.
- Identify what areas are causing your operators to wait
- You can even add sub reasons to get more in-depth information (For example Waiting on Quality → First piece inspection).
- Once you know where these times are large you can work on reducing them.
- When operators have less than 20% unlabeled downtime, you will have a decent idea of where the most idle time is being lost.
- To determine how much time you have saved, identify the reason for lost hours, make an improvement, and then measure the time again.
- Multiply the time savings by your hourly production cost to see how much you have saved on that project.
Reduce Setup Times With the Setup Tool and Alerts
- Time commitment: 1 hr meeting with your team to decide your set up steps
- Features Required: Downtime, Alerts, Set Up Module or Tally Sheets with Setup
Tracking set up with just a downtime code to begin with is a great way to get your baseline for how long it takes your team to do setups
Earlier we discussed setting up alerts for machine downtime. But did you know you can also use the alerts to get notified when a setup or changeover is taking too long?
- For example, you could set a goal for setups to take no longer than 1 hour. Using the Amper Setup tool, your operators would start their setup, and if he/she takes longer than the goal, an escalation team would be notified. To get started with setups & setup goal alerts:
- Contact your CSM to have them turn on the Setup tool in the system
- Set a goal for setups (ex. 1 hour) in the Setup area of the Settings
- Create an alert escalation workflow to be notified if a setup goes X minutes over your goal.
- If it goes over by 15 minutes, maybe you notify a supervisor to assist
- If it goes over by 30 minutes, maybe a manager gets notified
- 1 hour, and maybe the maintenance team is on the way to assist!
- Train your team on the setup tool
- Roll the tool out to your team and prevent setups from taking too long.
- Compare the downtime you experienced due to setup before making the alert to the downtime you experienced after.
- Calculate your savings per set up by taking the difference and multiplying it by your cost per hour.
Use Tally Sheets and Go Green!
- Time commitment: 1hr to set up, 30 min to train
- Features Required: Tally Sheets and Tablets
Help your company go green by switching out to our paperless tally sheets
- Set up what fields you would like your operators to input and make your preferences required
- When an operator starts a new job they will enter the information on the Tablets
Track cost lost to scrap
- On the tally sheets have operators log scrap quantities
- At the end of a designated time period, download the paperless csv and get a total of scrap parts
- Associate each part with a cost and find your amount lost to scrap
- Identify the areas where you are losing the most money and focus on making improvements in those specific areas.
- To track savings, calculate how much paper you use in a month due to your traveler
- Even just reducing by half you can have that cost saving calculated
- Review time spent from manually entering the paper information into your ERP system or Excel
- Get an estimate for how many hours a week was spent doing this
- Multiple that by the hourly rate for the person performing the activity
- Adding this number to your Paper cost saved will give you a total savings for this project