No more machine overloading

The Polish furniture manufacturer noticed a significant increase in the production of furniture boards in the last quarter, compared to the previous year. It turned out that the format saws operators (tempted by the latest bonus program) made their own decisions to increase the production quotas. Instead of cutting the plates one by one, they cut several at once. It had an impact on the machinery park...

The production results actually increased, but so did the costs of maintenance - overloading machines resulted in the necessity to change discs more often. Repairs were significantly more frequent as well. Additionally, cutting several boards at once had a negative impact on the quality of the manufactured elements.

The production director did not want to punish his employees for good intentions - he decided to keep the bonus system based on production efficiency, but with a few modifications.

It was necessary to measure the actual production capacity of saws. Based on that, a quantitative production quotas could be adjusted to meet the real capabilities of the machines and employees.

The expected increase in efficiency could not have a negative impact on the quality of production and the condition of the machines - so a mechanism to assess whether the saws are overloaded was needed.

The FitMech service was used to analyze the use of the format saws to calculate their actual work load, detect possible overloads and measure the number and duration of work cycles performed on individual shifts.

The data collected over three months allowed the Production Director to define new, fair and at the same time ambitious quantitative standards. As a result, employees no longer had to overload the machines to reach the production quotas rewarded with the bonuses.

Operators, on the other hand, gained a tool that automatically measured and reported the progress of individual people in executing the plan. This allowed for a fair, commitment-dependent distribution of the bonuses.