Automation (CONT’D FROM PAGE 24)
to work on the machine.
Connell: What do you think your gain was, was it higher productivity, was it higher quality or was it just making the job that much more tolerable? Thomas: Yes, I mean I think productivity encompasses a couple of those other pieces — quality, reliability, sanity — and I think the idea of automating has really helped all those things. I mean with automation, the neat thing about it, you can kind of dial it in and turn it up; you can only go so far with a person in doing that. When we were having peo- ple that were manually spotting boxes, they were probably in the 1,000 an hour range. With automation, we’re 2,000 an hour range so certainly productivity is a big one. Connell: Dennis what about you, where do you start? Wood: Stay close to people in the industry to see what’s out there. You’ve got to be able to conceptualize what you might do next. Make sure you have good dialogue with the people who are developing stuff. There are brilliant people, hundreds of companies that can supply automa- tion to our industry. Then take the time to watch and listen to what’s happening with your people and process to see what you can do to improve their engagement, reduce their chances of injury or repetitive motion type things and what can be done to improve overall productivity. Cohen: There’s always the growth factor. That’s kind of its own category. The other points we look at consistently are safety. Is there an ergonomic issue at the plant I can rec- tify? Productivity enhancement, quality enhancement — is there something I can buy or make to reduce the amount of rejects? And labor — is there something I can do to re- duce my dependency on labor? So those are the main categories we look at, and those typically come to light because the bottlenecks usually come right out at you. I walk through the plant nearly every day, and they shine at you, and you know where they are over time. Then we always look at data to support it. But those are the main things we look at. Connell: What are the ROI variables most considered and if you had to pick one, other than safety, what would you focus on? Cohen: It has to be justified on sales growth on top line that you can go out and get it. The investment we just made, we're seeing a great return on investment in labor and reduction of labor. But also for us waste is a big factor in payback. In our new system what we're seeing is a re- duction. We measure waste daily by shift — we’re hawks on waste — but we've reduced material handling waste by
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26 October 16, 2023
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