Reduce Waste, Scrap And Spoilage

Is spoilage an unacceptable percentage of your production? Do you struggle to see where the losses are really occurring? Are you at a loss to know what more you could do to tackle the problem?

Consigning spoilage to the waste bin

Spoilage is classified in two ways: post-production, where bad product is taken out of a batch destined for a customer, and in-production (or in-line) spoilage that has been rejected as it passes down the line (typically high-speed, complex processes where defective parts are automatically rejected).

It impacts the business with lost raw materials and lost production time. In some cases spoilage can be reworked, but rework is expensive; it has a negative effect on production numbers and adds complexity in situations requiring detailed traceability records.

Spoilage is usually reported at a high level by the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system which can compare output produced against input materials consumed. However, where the spoilage has occurred and why is much harder to ascertain. Pinpointing the problem areas is a major benefit that Lighthouse's Shopfloor-Online MES brings to your production management.

By capturing production counts electronically direct from every machine in the line, Lighthouse Shopfloor-Online MES is able to track spoilage in real-time. It's a completely paperless system that eliminates the human error.

Spoilage can be automatically examined by machine, line, product, department, for instance, and reports extracted at the click of a button by reason, product type, day, week, month and so on. Results can be monitored over time to see if improvement programmes are working.

At the operator level, simple graphic displays make everyone aware of the status of the line and alarms can be raised if spoilage thresholds are exceeded. For managers, it is now possible to be alerted quickly when problems arise. But more importantly it gives you the data you need for more in-depth analysis to support improvement activities.

Shopfloor-Online MES can also provide complete traceability of raw materials and the batches produced from them, opening up the potential to analyse spoilage by supplier.

Since Shopfloor-Online MES can also interface with ERP systems, the low-level spoilage data can be reconciled with the high-level ERP data.

Being web based, the information is easily accessed and immediately available to all who need it from the shop floor to maintenance and to engineering. By providing accurate, reliable data and versatile reporting, it now makes it possible for you to get a sustained focus on spoilage - the starting point for any improvement activity.