Optimizing the productivity of every employee is the goal of nearly all managers working in manufacturing. Improved efficiency means a stronger bottom line, both now and in the future. Knowing the right data and how to measure it correctly plays a significant role in raising your team’s operational efficiency.
With a productive industrial team in mind, here are a few ideas on measuring productivity in the manufacturing sector. Hopefully, these insights lead to more success for your organization.
Don’t Let the Complexity of Your Process Hamper Productivity Tracking
Depending on the overall complexity of your manufacturing shop, you may find it difficult to accurately track the real productivity of your employees. Still, industry productivity expert Peter Reagan feels breaking everything down to a simple equation helps to facilitate the process.
This equation, found in a Harvard Business Review article from 1988, is still applicable for today’s economy. Its simple formula defines productivity by dividing the units of output by units of input. So if you employ a worker able to build 20 widgets each day, they are twice as productive as someone with the same pay rate who is able to build only 10 per day.
Still, Reagan highlights the difficulty found in fitting a complex process into this basic equation. “Units of input can generally be measured in terms of time and money. But in the complex project scenario, how do you break this down and measure the individual units of output per team member. You will need to do this if you are to measure the true productivity of an individual worker within a complex project,” said Reagan.
The Future of Productivity Measuring
Reagan imagines a future where each potential candidate for a job has their own “productivity multiplier,” theoretically making it easier for a company to determine whether or not that person would make a valuable impact on their operations. Standardizing this kind of metric across a variety of industries would be a rather large undertaking.
Nonetheless, the importance of measuring the productivity of your current staff cannot be underestimated. Research to see if some form of Human Capital Management System (HCMS) makes sense for your organization’s employee tracking needs.
If you need further advice on building a productive staff in the world of manufacturing, talk to the experts at Venteon. As one of the leading industrial staffing agencies in the Midwest, we also provide a host of great candidates able to meet your needs. Click to contact us today.