3 Ways Technology Can Improve Manufacturing Efficiency

Dec 11, 2019

Efficiency is absolutely vital in the manufacturing industry. Your clients expect you to deliver a good quality product in a timely manner. If you can’t meet both of those requirements, your customers will soon find another company that can. That’s why it’s so important that you are always looking for new ways to improve efficiency and speed up the manufacturing process. Reducing waste and downtime will also lead to big savings and higher profit margins. There are a lot of ways to improve your operation, but investing in technology is one of the best. These are some of the ways that technology can improve your manufacturing efficiency. 

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Improved Health And Safety

Injuries on the shop floor cause big problems for manufacturing companies. The operation will need to be shut down, often for an extended period of time while an investigation is carried out into the cause of the accident. You may also lose a good employee for a while if they are seriously injured, and that means productivity will take a big hit. But new technology can help to improve health and safety in a big way. Modern machines will have more built in safety features to protect employees, and they will also have improved monitoring systems. You will receive notifications when routine maintenance needs to be carried out or when certain parts are wearing and need to be replaced. This makes it a lot easier to keep up with maintenance and ensure that the machines are always safe. 

Simulated Engineering 

If you need to create custom parts for a job, you may need to create a custom tool for that job as well. This is often done by means of trial and error and multiple tools will be made and tested before you manage to make the correct part. But this is a very inefficient way of doing things, especially when you are trying to make complex sheet metal parts. However, new technology offers you a better way of doing this by way of simulated engineering. Companies like Stamping Simulation (stampingsimulation.com) can manage the design phase using simulations, and perfect the design of the tool without having to make multiple prototypes. This makes the whole process quicker, more accurate, and more cost effective. 

3D Printing 

3D printing technology is one of the best manufacturing innovations in recent years. Before the advent of 3D printers, making complex plastic parts often required expensive molds that could be very difficult to design. But 3D printers allow far more complicated designs to be manufactured for a much lower price. They also allow for cheap prototypes to be produced quickly. Check out 3dinsider.com for more on the benefits of 3D printing. 

While there are issues around the materials used in 3D printers because they are not always as robust, unmanned printers do mean that you can keep manufacturing around the clock and reduce the financial burden by cutting back on employees. As the technology improves, it is likely to change the majority of manufacturing operations. 

If you run a manufacturing business, investing in these technologies will help you to improve efficiency overnight.