How to reduce labor costs and increase employees' income through management

From the experience of Japanese and German manufacturing powers, China enterprises still have a lot of room for management improvement. Some data show that by implementing lean management, the per capita production efficiency can be improved by 30%, the defective rate can be reduced by 50%, and the inventory can be reduced by 50%.

The room for improvement of labor cost

With the end of the long-term low-paid labor era in China, many enterprises, especially OEM enterprises, have already felt the competitive pressure brought by rising labor costs. This is good for workers, but it forces enterprises to improve labor efficiency. From the perspective of the long-term development of enterprises, to achieve long-term wage growth, the best choice is to improve the production efficiency of employees, so that they can generate more value in the same time.

At the production site, we often see that the workers are constantly busy. Workers are really doing things, but are they really creating value?

We call the action of workers directly processing products value-added actions, but there are many non-value-added actions in the production process, such as: carrying materials, debugging machines, changing models, waiting for materials, repeating operations (rework) and so on. A careful study of every movement of workers is worth asking: Is this movement meaningful? Can I exchange products? Is there a better way? Why does the hourly output of workers fluctuate greatly?

With the help of action analysis, work sampling and hourly output tracking, we will find that in many cases, the value-added rate of workers will exceed 50%. Good enterprises in the pure assembly industry will reach 60%-70%. This data tells us that there is a lot of room for improvement in production efficiency, which can even reach 80%-90% under extreme conditions.

This is also the secret that lean production can reduce labor costs when employees' income increases.

Job optimization to improve efficiency space

In order to improve the labor efficiency of workers, that is, to increase the proportion of value-added actions, there are many ways to learn from.

Product line balance

The working speed of several people in a line or a product line is often different, and the productivity of the whole line depends on the slowest process. This caused a waste of waiting for other operators. Draw a line balance table and you can clearly analyze the balance rate. As can be seen from the table 1, the output of the whole line is determined by the slowest 1 1 process (time consuming 18 seconds).

If the formula CT/(MaxCTxn)(n: number of processes; CT: operation time; MaxCT: the longest process operation time) multiplied by 100 equals 72%, which tells us that 28% of employees' time is wasted for every product produced in this line.

This analysis is also meaningful if these processes are not arranged in a continuous line, but at different stations. It can tell you what the overall capacity is and arrange them to do extra work for fast-moving stations.

Reasonable distribution of homework content

If the production speed is not balanced, we should think about the production speed of employees. At this time, the first thing to know is the production rhythm. Production lead time is the actual time required for customers to produce a product. In the above example, the production lead time is 1 1 sec, that is, customers need a product every 1 1 sec.

With takt time, homework can be allocated reasonably. The work actions of each employee can be divided into two categories: value-added actions and non-value-added actions, which can be divided into three categories: Class A actions can be eliminated immediately without any obstacles; Class b behavior is an action that is not needed in the work, but needs to be eliminated after analyzing the work; Class C behavior is inevitable under current conditions. These behaviors are worthless, but they are necessary and need improvement to be ruled out. By eliminating, merging, rearranging and simplifying these three actions, the overall efficiency is finally improved.

Table 2 shows the line balance table after the reorganization of the above production line, and the balance rate has been increased from 72% to 82%. A perfect line, line balance can reach more than 90%.

Rational design of production layout

Production layout includes three levels: workbench layout, line layout and the whole production workshop layout.

The layout of the workbench directly affects the working time of the operator. There are many factors to consider in designing the workbench, and most of the time it is advocated to work standing. Standing work, arm movements are relatively free, especially lateral movements are convenient to avoid twisting the waist. When you need to flexibly adjust the number of people and work content, you can only stand freely. When a person needs to do more than two processes, he can only do it standing. Sitting work is only applicable to the situation that the product itself will not change, the product size is small and the work content is less.

The design of the workbench is also very important. We usually refer to figure 1.

For the layout of the line, U-shape is the best, because it can flexibly allocate the number of operators, effectively control the entry and exit of products, facilitate the communication between operators, facilitate the supply of materials, and so on.

According to the principle of product process flow, the layout of the whole workshop is traditionally based on function. For example, in a machining workshop, lathes and milling machines are together and planed and ground in another independent area, regardless of the turning, milling, planing and grinding processes of a product. This workshop layout is beneficial to management, but not to operation. We should make the layout according to the production process.

low cost automation

If wages in the labor market rise, it is more cost-effective to reduce human labor and rely on equipment (capital) for production. But automation is not blindly pursuing high-performance and high-tech equipment, but realizing low-cost automation.

A French company has a factory in Huizhou and a factory in Dongguan, Guangdong. Huizhou factory focuses on improving the operation. Under the same output, the assembly line is reduced from 10 to 6 people. Dongguan factory takes automation as the center and introduces a large number of automatic production equipment, with few operators and only two or three people in a production line. Compared with Dongguan factory, Huizhou factory has twice as many employees as Dongguan factory, but in terms of financial indicators, Huizhou's indicators are much better, the main difference is that the management cost is much lower. The equipment-related cost of Dongguan factory is more than double that of Huizhou factory.

We suggest that the return on investment should be one year when designing automation equipment. Moreover, automation is also a gradual process. We can step by step according to the level of automation, and it is best to put some funds into automation from the annual improvement income, so as not to cause additional burden to enterprises.

The commonly used automation levels are shown in Table 3.

Use of conveyor belt

There is no doubt that the efficiency of fluidized production is the highest, but fluidized production is not just a conveyor belt assembly line. Twenty years ago, when there was a lean tide in Japan, conveyor belts were dismantled one after another, but China enterprises generally still like conveyor belts. Transmission has certain advantages, the biggest advantage is convenient production management and control. But the conveyor belt also has many disadvantages:

Increase the waste of taking and placing from the conveyor belt;

Will produce isolated island operation, the distance between operators is far;

Because the boundary between stations is clear, it is easy to cause unbalanced operation;

There will be a lot of work-in-process accumulation on the conveyor belt;

The application of conveyor belt will increase the corresponding production area;

It is not clear whether the production status between stations is too fast or too slow.

If the product is heavy and bulky, the conveyor belt must be used, and the conveyor belt can be set according to the following principles.

Set the conveyor belt speed according to the production beat;

Make positioning marks on the conveyor belt;

Clearly defined boundary of operation scope (the operation scope must be within the production beat);

Adopt double-node control;

The assembled products or fixtures shall be within the operation scope (operation sequence, standard WIP inventory);

Try to use gravity instead of motor.

Indirect work efficiency

At the production site, in addition to the operators, you will meet many auxiliary personnel, mostly logistics personnel and quality inspectors.

Optimization of logistics personnel

The work efficiency of logistics personnel is often ignored because of the unfixed content and location. Logistics personnel are often only 30%-40% efficient, and they are waiting at other times. The main reason is that the production is unstable, and it is impossible to predict when the operator is short of materials and when it will be completed. He can only wait around and go to work if necessary. Therefore, the premise of improving the efficiency of logistics personnel is to improve the stability of production. When the production speed reaches a certain stability, we can make a PFEP for each material to improve the efficiency of logistics.

The key here is that the production and consumption speed of each box of materials should be consistent or proportional, so as to realize the material supply mode of fixed interval and fixed frequency for small trains. Doing so will greatly improve the efficiency of material supply and optimize the number of logistics personnel. It can not only improve the work efficiency of logistics personnel, but also greatly reduce the loss of material shortage in production line.

In addition, the workshop layout will affect the efficiency of logistics personnel, so the logistics route should be fully considered when designing the workshop layout.

Optimization of quality inspection personnel

Quality inspectors also appeared in large numbers at the production site. In some enterprises, quality inspection personnel account for more than 30% of the straight-line personnel at the production site. Actually, the fewer quality inspectors, the better. The reason is simple: quality is made, not detected. Job design, layout design and fixture design should all consider error prevention, how to prevent the occurrence of defects, how to prevent the outflow of defects and how to conduct full inspection. The demand for quality inspectors should be reduced through error prevention, and the proportion of good enterprises should be below 5%.

Fixture optimization

Hand is the most expensive fixture, so it is necessary to avoid the clamping action of hand (mostly clamping with one hand and operating with the other) and complete it by fixture instead.

The design of fixture should pay attention to the clamping or opening action, especially the opening action after product processing, which is not suitable for human operation and can be controlled by sensors. In this way, man-machine separation can be realized. When the operator puts the product on the fixture, he can do other work or operate other machines, reducing the waste of waiting for the machine.

High efficiency of production management

Production site management is very complicated. A well-managed enterprise should be a boring place, because everything is step by step and there is no change, but it is impossible to do this in reality. Our common phenomenon is that production managers deal with all kinds of problems all day, and all kinds of situations may happen at any time and anywhere in the production site. Shortage of materials for a while, shutdown for a while, poor quality increased sharply, and material transfer personnel also ran around the whole workshop. These are all manifestations of poor production management.

Standardized operation

Production management must first have certain stability, so that managers will not become firefighters. Standardized operation is the basis of stable production management.

The various optimization methods mentioned above are the beginning of standardization work. When the methods are determined, corresponding documents will be formed and corresponding training will be carried out. At this time, employees should really master the content and skills of homework through JI (work guidance) "three teaching and four training".

Many enterprises do not have the concept of standardization, and think that it is inevitable that different employees do the same thing, and the output difference of different employees in some enterprises is as high as 50%. There are also many enterprises that understand standardization as making some standardized documents for employees to implement. This is a big misunderstanding. Standardization operation is a continuous cycle process of optimizing design, training, implementation, inspection and re-optimization. It is the responsibility of managers to let front-line employees abide by standardized operations. In addition to a series of training, they should also follow up on the spot in real time and correct the non-compliance at any time. Managers at all levels should take corresponding measures to ensure the correct implementation of standardized operations. Including the work of managers themselves, should also be standardized, so that management work has rules to follow and will not vary from person to person.

Hourly output tracking

When the production site has a certain stability, managers can make time for fine management. Generally speaking, the management span of enterprises is in weeks or days, but for modern management, this span is too long. After summing up what happened one day, you can only take corresponding measures the next day at the earliest. This is too slow for refined management, and our usual management span is in hours.

Table 4 is an hourly output tracking table. Take the hour as the unit to see if the production is abnormal. When there is a problem, solve it in time. It is necessary to establish a rapid response mechanism on the spot.

Of course, standardization is the basis of realizing hourly tracking. Without standardized operation, managers can only be busy dealing with various emergencies and have no time to manage in such a short time.

Transparent management

The essence of management is not "planning" but "execution". Without effective implementation, no matter how good the plan is, there will be no "achievement". To achieve effective management, the first thing is transparency.

We often see these phenomena in the production site:

The production plan is divorced from the actual production in the workshop, and the plan does not have the function of guiding production;

The flexibility of production site operation is poor, which can not solve the problem of inserting orders and respond to market changes quickly;

The problem of information island in production line is serious. Automation equipment can't collect, monitor and schedule the workshop in a single machine, which leads to opaque production process, unable to evaluate the production status of the workshop and unable to provide production decision support information.

It is impossible to effectively trace the production information such as people, machines, materials, methods, environment and quality of each engine in the production process, and it is impossible to carry out continuous improvement and after-sales service well;

It is impossible to effectively manage all the production resources in the workshop, including equipment, personnel, tools, etc. And it is impossible to monitor and manage resources in real time.

The transparency of production is the basic condition of effective management. The ways and means to achieve transparency can be determined according to the actual situation. Small enterprises with simple production can use visual boards to fill in production information manually; For large enterprises with complex production, it can be realized through information technology. Of course, it is a non-value-added process for operators to fill in information, and how to obtain real-time production information efficiently also needs to be studied.

To sum up, as enterprise managers, we need to think about how to creatively improve the income of workers, improve production efficiency and reduce production costs through various refined management methods on the premise of improving working conditions and optimizing operation management. In the long run, only enterprises that strike a good balance between income growth and productivity improvement will achieve long-term development.