INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING
Using Lean Six Sigma and industrial engineering methodologies, we improve throughput and productivity, while decreasing expenses.
Process Improvement
We offer a wide range of process improvement services to ensure that your plant runs as efficiently as possible. Just click the headings below to reveal more information about each category of our process improvement offerings.
We use our training in Lean Six Sigma to uncover opportunities for savings throughout the plant including labor, utilities, scheduling, safety, and more. We report back to you on each potential improvement. Some are big, some are small, but they all add up to substantial annual savings and increased plant capacity.
These projects usually follow one of our process improvement assessment projects (see above), during which we identified areas ripe for improvement throughout the facility. The next step is for us to guide your team in the implementation of these improvements through a Lean Six Sigma project. We’ll follow the Lean fundamentals of Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control (DMAIC), helping you see huge improvements in PPOH coupled with commensurate savings in labor and utilities. We’ll train your team in Lean fundamentals to help them understand and take ownership of the improvement process so that when we walk out the door, your team has all the tools they need to sustain the improvements already made and to continuously improve to keep your business growing and profitable.
The textbook on time & motion studies warns that the failure to implement and track production standards results in employee performance at just 60% of their potential. That’s why you need our experts to perform time & motion studies and to help establish production standards and tracking methods for every production task within your plant. We’ll not only use time-tested industrial engineering methods, but we’ll use our industry expertise to ensure that the processes being used in your facility are as efficient as possible, providing you with documented production standards you can use to provide your team with the tools, training, and expectations to meet their full potential.
Changes in production mix, equipment, labor, and plant management over time can result in a decrease in plant capacity and an imbalance between demand and output. Too often operators start looking at building a new plant or buying new equipment when what they should be doing is having one of our production scheduling experts make a visit. With our training in Lean Six Sigma and our experience in industrial engineering, we can analyze your production requirements and provide your team with a daily production schedule that not only eliminates imbalance in your production flow but also compensates for potential bottlenecks that may exist within your facility. The result is improved productivity and throughput, and a plant that is easier to manage and run.
As your business grows and evolves, changes in product mix, production equipment, and operational processes leave you wondering about how much capacity you actually have. That’s where our production models and capacity analyses come in.
Propeller’s Production and Capacity Models utilize next-generation statistical analysis, modeling, and data visualization tools to provide you with objective insights to help every facility reach peak performance. The models tell you, with pinpoint accuracy, how much you can process now and, as you grow, when and where you’ll need to add processing machinery, process utility equipment, and/or people. We also use these tools to test the merits of strategic and capital plans, including the ability to analyze an infinite variety of hypotheses and alternatives to ensure your next moves are the right ones. In short, we will help you make informed, objective determinations of the best investments for future growth, labor utilization, and profit.