Firstly productivity and output it is not necessarily about machinery and automation. Yes, there are a number of companies who have been drawn into installing a lot of highly sophisticated machinery at vast expense. Such companies, if they choose the equipment wisely and incorporate it into their layout well, should be able to achieve a good level of productivity. (Note the provisos I make). Remember, though, machinery has to be paid for and the price paid will find its way through to the cost of windows and doors.
Some other companies choose to take what I call the lean fabricating route that involves carefully examining your current processes, layouts and work flows and quite simply improving them. Only after ensuring that they have close to the maximum throughput will they feed in the minimum amount of new machinery to address the bottleneck in the system. Then they go through the process again finding out the new bottleneck and feeding more machinery in. This way the output is maximised, productivity raised and the capital spend minimised. You will be surprised just how fast improvement flows and the productivity of an operation improved irrespective of whether a producer is large or small. To get a little deeper into the subject, have a look at the following articles that are featured on this site:
- Grey Matter Before Greenbacks
- The Lean Machine
- Constructing the Lean Machine
Just a couple of points I would want to make over and above the substance of your question. Firstly take a lean approach to factory size and resist calls to take on more space until you have been through the lean examination process. Secondly also resist the temptation to buy and install machinery to overcome a non-associated issue, such as an employee absence problem, address the specific issue first.
In your question you don’t tell me the size of your business, your volumes and mix of products, so I cannot comment specifically . If you make contact then we can go a little deeper into your situation and issues.
