Efficiently Preparing KPI For Manufacturing

We all know how the manufacturing process of any business or enterprise becomes more and more complex these days. With so many factors to consider at hand, this is no longer a surprise to any businessman - particularly because all of these have to be considered to ensure the enterprise's efficiency. Planning, sourcing, production, finance, distribution, workforce information, all of these factors are correlated, so intensive analysis should be done to determine the existing correlation between factors, among factors, and within factors. Thus, KPI for manufacturing is needed because key performance indicators act as visualization tools for such manufacturing facilities.

The underlying concept to keep in mind here is to prepare what is known as a KPI dashboard. This dashboard pretty much looks like the regular dashboard you see in your car - only that it does not contain details such as gauges for fuel, your speedometer, and the like. The KPI dashboard would contain KPIs used by the existing manufacturing department of the enterprise. One particular requirement that comes with the development of these KPIs is that these quantifiable figures should provide a functional description of the following aspects: data sources, detailed report definitions, data inclusion requirements, and data visualization types.

Just what exactly is entailed in a functional description, as required? What has to happen here is that the final product - which is the dashboard itself - is able to convey and exhibit the critical KPI data in the most intuitive and meaningful manner. All of the enterprise's current metrics and procedures being used to keep track of manufacturing should be streamlined mapped, and even simplified right before the dashboard is completed and automated. Furthermore, the top-down perspective should be employed so that the plant operations would be properly aligned as well. Top-down perspective means from the manufacturing plant manager right down to the production supervisor, of course. But when this is aligned with the plant's operations, the bottom-up perspective would then be used. This means that it would come from the direction of the production supervisor right up to the plant manager. In this manner, you have ensured a balanced window by which the whole operation of the business can then be observed.

It would then be understandably important to identify the KPIs that would be used. These are then utilized to gauge and measure manufacturing in a nutshell. Make sure to limit the number of KPIs to use, as having too many would just spell all the more confusion. After identifying them, you should then proceed to identify the roles of the people using the dashboard, as well as their access to the information at hand. You have to understand that the information plotted on your dashboard would actually be specifically relevant to the person who is viewing it. The plant manager, for instance, would need to see KPIs that exhibit how the whole plant is operating at a glance. Unit managers, on the other hand, would just need to see metrics that are relevant to their subunits so that they can report such progress to the manufacturing plant manager.