When thinking about how to improve productivity in modern manufacturing, it’s important first to consider one of the biggest single tools available to improving production: modern computer accounting software. A tool that’s frequently overlooked by companies is the business data integration or BDI tool. While it’s certainly no replacement for a human being in the equation, a good BDI tool can help your company move closer towards meeting its productivity goals and ultimately improve its bottom line. In fact, when combined with a robust ERP, a BDI tool can help your company manage its ERP more effectively as well.
One of the primary ways how to improve productivity is to reduce the amount of wasted time and money in the work environment. In today’s high-tech, fast-paced society, wasting time can sometimes seem inevitable. When considering how to improve productivity, it’s important to think about how to reduce the number of wasted time. You may be surprised at just how much productivity is lost due to wasted time each day. A BDI tool can help you track all aspects of your production process and show you where your time is being wasted and how productive it really is.
In addition to being an excellent way to track all aspects of your production process, a BDI tool can also provide valuable insight into your overall productivity. By utilizing real-time visibility into your ERP, a BDI tool can reveal possible areas where productivity is lacking. Many companies make the mistake of investing heavily in information visualization tools without paying attention to what they’re really supposed to do: improve the internal functions of your company. While there’s certainly nothing wrong with spending money on a powerful visualization tool, the truth is that real-time visualizations are a great complement to your ERP, not a replacement. By investing in real-time BDI solutions, you’re not only making your ERP more effective; you’re also ensuring that you’re spending your money wisely.
The last thing that you want when working in an organization is to feel like all your effort is in vain. If you spend all your time trying to figure out how to improve productivity, while other tasks go unaddressed, you might find that you waste too much time. In order to feel like your job is actually valuable, and not a waste of time, you need to be able to measure how productive you’re actually being. This can be accomplished with a BDI solution.
How to measure productivity? The most common way to do this is through metrics. These are extremely important metrics, and the ones that you should be most concerned with when using your BDI solution. Metrics are measurements, or quantities that tell you the status of something. For example, the number of sales per month, the number of new customers that signed up during a given period, or the number of calls made per day on your business phone line.
The process of how to boost productivity isn’t as complicated as it sounds. When a business decides to use an ERP system, the manufacturing process needs to be carefully analyzed. If the manufacturing process hasn’t been changed to benefit from an ERP solution, the company may end up spending more on training sessions for the workers who will be performing their role without any real benefit to the business. If employees know they’re being trained in the proper manner, and that the company has made the necessary investments to make things easier for them, they’ll feel more confident when approaching the job.
How to increase productivity, then, begins with knowing what you’re doing right, and wrong, in the workplace. You need to have an action plan in place that will help you evaluate your current situation and see what changes need to be made. Once you know how to improve your workflow, the next step is to figure out how to change the processes that your employees are already using to save time. This can include everything from how they fill out their work papers to the way they do their own personal grooming.
One of the biggest things that employees do that can result in lost productivity is not being organized. When they’re able to find something, whether it’s a piece of paper or an index card, or even an electronic item, they should be able to find it with a clear view of where they should be working. If they can’t, though, then they can miss out on crucial information that could mean the difference between getting things done and getting them done right. Sooner or later, if an employee doesn’t know where to find what he needs to get done, he or she will take the job away from someone else. How to increase productivity simply means having an organized workspace. When that happens, productivity continues to rise.
