Avoid the headaches of downtime with lean manufacturing strategies
Unplanned downtime is silently draining profitability from consumer packaged goods (CPG) manufacturers. Every minute of halted production can lead to missed delivery deadlines, frustrated customers and reduced market share. Given that 72% of machine downtime is avoidable through digital production strategies1, CPG companies face a critical choice: continue being reactive or embrace proactive and predictive solutions.
This article will explore the common causes of downtime, the risks of a reactive rather than proactive strategy, and how ecosystem integration along with predictive solutions can enhance efficiency and production capabilities.
The common causes of downtime
CPG manufacturers face multiple causes of production downtime that directly impact operational efficiency and profitability. Let’s take a look at the primary culprits:
- Inefficient production scheduling and planning
Poor production planning and disjointed communication can lead to significant downtime. Without advanced scheduling systems, CPG companies can experience frequent delays, inefficient sequencing and suboptimal machine utilization. The complexity of manually managing multiple SKUs, changeovers and production sequences via spreadsheets is time-consuming and error-prone, leading to inefficient resource allocation and the inability to respond quickly to unexpected changes.
- Equipment failures and inadequate maintenance
Unexpected equipment breakdowns represent a critical source of downtime. Without predictive and preventive maintenance measures, manufacturers address failures only after they occur; this includes premature equipment failure or jamming due to operator error or incorrect settings.
Machine breakdowns cause sudden and often lengthy halts in production. This is especially true for aging machinery, which is more prone to breakdowns, requiring frequent repairs and maintenance leading to extended and costly repair times. The wear and tear caused by continuous operations takes its toll on parts like bearings, belts, gears and seals, which can cause unexpected failures.
- Lack of real-time production visibility
Outdated and inefficient data management systems create a critical blind spot for operations managers. This lack of visibility prevents operations managers from identifying issues before they become critical problems, leading to reactive decision-making and extended downtime events.
- System instability and technology failures
Legacy systems that are prone to crashes and instability create unpredictable downtime events. System failures prevent schedulers from accessing critical production data, disrupt automated processes and force manual workarounds that slow production. This is particularly problematic when managing high product variety and complex production requirements.
- Supply chain and raw material disruptions
Manufacturers are increasingly concerned about supply chain disruptions that have become more common and can drastically lower profits. Organizations that rely on external vendors for resource procurement are anxious about raw material shortages, quality issues, delivery delays and the inability to track materials effectively through the production process.
- Complexity of product variants and changeovers
Managing thousands of variants, formulations and recipes creates considerable changeover challenges. Without optimized changeover processes and digital tools to manage complexity, setup times between production runs extend unnecessarily, errors may occur during changeovers, material waste increases and production efficiency suffers.
Further adding to the complexity is the extensive cleaning cycles that must take place between different product batches, particularly in food and beverage, where thorough cleaning is essential but can consume substantial time if not optimized.
Enhancing lean manufacturing with an integrated platform
Being reactive isn’t a solution; it’s managing downtime once the issue starts. CPG manufacturers can address the causes of downtime with the right digital tools and software solutions to transform production reliability, optimize scheduling efficiency and safeguard competitive edge in an increasingly demanding marketplace.
Recent advancements in manufacturing execution system (MES) and other manufacturing operations management (MOM) software enable CPG producers to address the root causes of downtime.
Unlike siloed legacy systems, an integrated MES connects the “top floor” planning with the “shop floor” operations. As the heart of an integrated MOM solution, MES is not only used to orchestrate all production operations in accordance with product design and manufacturing engineering plans, but it also coordinates all production-related activities with:
- Enterprise resource planning (ERP)
- Factory automation systems
This ecosystem often includes a comprehensive digital twin, providing a continuously updated virtual representation of products and processes. This connectivity fosters cross-departmental collaboration and provides real-time data, which is essential for proactive decision-making.
An integrated approach to minimizing downtime
CPG manufacturers can leverage MES to work with leaner operations in several ways while addressing the root causes of downtime:
- Predictive maintenance and OEE for machine performance
One of the most impactful solutions for reducing downtime from breakdowns and sub-optimal maintenance is the combination of MES-based overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) monitoring and predictive maintenance. MES OEE modules provide real-time insights into machine performance, availability and quality, highlighting inefficiencies. Integrating this with predictive maintenance solutions allows for early detection of anomalies or deviations, such as engine temperatures rising too high or machine vibration being out of range. This proactive approach enables maintenance teams to schedule interventions before a breakdown occurs, often during planned changeovers or other opportune moments, significantly reducing unplanned downtime and improving operational cost control.
- Optimized planning, scheduling and cleaning cycles
Integrating MES with advanced planning and scheduling (APS) systems can drastically reduce inefficient changeovers and lengthy cleaning cycles. This integration eliminates the manual transfer of data, providing APS with real-time production conditions. With this holistic view, the system can optimize the sequence of products processed on a line to reduce the risk of allergen exposures or contamination while still assuring on-time delivery to the customer.
- Improved material handling and supply chain
Disruptions in the flow of raw materials or packaging can bring a production line to a halt. Integrating Siemens’ MES solution, which includes supply and material management capabilities, with intra-plant logistics, helps manage essential ingredients, packaging materials and delivery schedules, assuring correct material delivery to the line when it’s needed. This minimizes the likelihood of stockouts, quality issues with raw materials, logistical delays and bottlenecks.
- Streamlined quality control and sampling
Quality control begins with raw material inspection during inbound delivery and avoids bad quality materials being released from the warehouse into production. For bulk materials, this avoids poor-quality materials being unloaded in a silo. These measures prevent poor- or low-quality products from external sources from entering the production facility.
Issues with product quality can lead to significant downtime, either for inspection, rework or discarding entire batches. Integrating MES with research, development and laboratory (RD&L) software that includes a full-scale laboratory information management system (LIMS) can address these potential issues by enabling early detection and prevention before they escalate into costly batch failures. This can help eliminate process deviations that impact product quality, contamination and packaging defects, and enable greater production throughput of high-quality goods.
The full integration of MES and LIMS enables producers to catch defects near where they occurred, which eliminates the need for more involved reprocessing (or scrapping) and repeating multiple steps when defects are detected further down the production line.
The result: faster operations and a more balanced production rate.
Reduce downtime and improve OEE
By integrating platforms, enhancing collaboration between cross-functional departments and minimizing waste, CPG companies can move from reactive problem-solving to proactive prevention, significantly reducing downtime and improving overall operational efficiency. These manufacturing strategies can:
- Provide greater process-flexibility and efficiency
- Help integrate regulatory and quality requirements
- Synchronize production processes for optimal supply chain management
- Reduce maintenance and operation costs
Missed opportunities come in more forms than just downtime. To learn more ways to prevent wasted time, money and materials in CPG manufacturing, check out our ebook, “Going leaner in Consumer Packaged Goods manufacturing.”
