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| November 6, 2008 |
| Extra support for small firms in the UK from the European Investment Bank |
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| October 30, 2008 |
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Next Event
Sustainability Workshop - Stevenage Time: 10am-4pm Organisers: FIRA Date: 25 Nov 2008
Increase your profits by managing your material waste
Eunice Cinnamon, ukfirst’s Master Engineer, will guide you on how to reduce costs through managing your material waste.
Do you know how much your company is losing each year as a result of material waste? Do you ever walk past the machines in your factory to find that raw materials are being constantly wasted? Have you ever wondered how this is affecting the overall profitability of your business?
According to industry research, this could be as much as 7.3%* of your total turnover, and UK furniture manufacturers spend on average 3.8% of their turnovers dealing with material waste issues.
Why Lean?
Lean is a concept that describes the processes employed within a business. Lean processes, where they are properly employed, have a proven record of delivering bottom line savings to companies. This structured approach has proven it delivers real benefits to companies. Last year Industry Forums saved £391m to UK industry using this common approach.
Lean methodologies can be used to address the important issue of material waste. Not only can it address it, but it is also an easy way to reduce costs and increase your profitability. It has the added benefit of having low implementation costs, yet high rewards.
Where can I find my waste?
Raw materials costs feature heavily in most companies’ business accounts. This is getting more difficult with the upward trend of costs. However whilst the cost of purchase isn’t always in your control, you can affect how they are utilised through design or manufacture.
Material waste can be in the form of direct waste through poor utilisation of the raw material creating offcuts, poor quality resulting in rework, ineffective design, poor stores control, poor production planning, and poor purchasing creating obsolescence to name a few.
Quick tips to reduce material waste:
Like any effective recipe there are a few key ingredients - team involvement, management commitment and leadership, time, and teamwork.
Then you need to understand what you actually use and identify an area of study.
| 1) | Identify and quantify raw materials used and purchased |
| 2) | Identify and quantify waste of these raw materials from processes. |
| 3) | Identify cost to company of waste and prioritise focus areas |
| 4) | Identify key root causes and work to eliminate through effective action tracking |
| 5) | Measure improvement |
| 6) | Share successes with the team |
Identifying waste is not always an easy task and needs the input of everyone, as is identifying the real problem and putting solutions in place. By truly understanding your processes and your waste you can stop your material utilisation and costs getting out of control.
It must be remembered that the efficient conversion of raw material to finished goods can have a dramatic effect on your bottom line.
Making it a success
The use of lean methodologies has been proven to work time and time again. In today’s world, time is at a premium and cannot afford to be wasted. This systematic and methodical approach is required to provide the best result and a deliverable output in the shortest time possible.
For further information on material waste reduction, please click here