Fresenius Medical Care North America

The Manufacturing of Medical Devices is a heavily regulated industry that requires a lot of documentation and data collection. Quite often the data that is collected is useless for making business/operational decisions either because it’s quality and not business oriented or because the methods employed in the data collection (i.e. spreadsheets) are either not accurate or convey information that by the time its analyzed its already outdated.

With the digital transformation that is occurring across the industry where companies are moving away from paper based systems into electronic systems to reduce cost there is an opportunity to incorporate or integrate Business Intelligence (BI) Software into the manufacturing and operational processes.

The use of BI Tools can have many different applications but from my personal experience these types of tools can be very useful in real-time data collection/analysis and they can also be implemented as part of the standard manufacturing process to make data-driven business decisions on the spot. Below are some examples where BI tools could be used in the manufacturing environment.

Labor or Operational Efficiency

These tools could be used to track downtimes per employee, shift, machine or processes in order to drive changes and optimize process output. The data obtained could also be helpful in balancing a line or in the case where resources are limited it could help production management to move resources to different operations as demand or WIP (Work in Process) changes in real time.

Material Waste

The use of materials could be tracked and analyzed to determine if scrap/waste is being generated by a specific material lot, process, machine, shift or operator. Knowledge of this data is extremely helpful while conducting root cause analysis as it would help the team to focus on less variables during the investigation and reach faster to a root cause.

Supply Chain

Supply chain is very dynamic in nature and requires fast and accurate decisions to avoid out-of-stock situations, overstocking or cost increases. Thus making the right decisions at the right time is critical for the end-to-end supply chain specially in this post COVID-19 era.

Many companies continue to run and manage their logistics departments by using manual methods like spreadsheets, email communications, printed reports and meetings which could potentially create miscommunication, over communication or taking decisions with data that is outdated or corrupted.

Similar to other manufacturing areas, BI tools can be setup in the supply chain management to provide visibility and real time analysis so that the responsible teams or individuals can pull data and focus on the decisions needed in their day to day operations. The tool can also be setup in a way where the data is pulled from a single source rather than pushed to the team members so that the decisions are also updated at the same source to prevent issues of miscommunication or over communication between the cross functional team.

Conclusion

The use of BI tools can be very useful in the manufacturing environment to uncover specific cost reduction opportunities related to Material, Overhead and Labor Efficiency specially when these opportunities are not apparent until they are scrutinized with the Power of the BI tools in combination with some of the Lean Six-Sigma tools for root cause analysis.

Supply Chain management is another area of opportunity to avoid out-of-stock situations, overstocking or cost increases as BI tools can help drive faster and more accurate decisions as well as optimize the cross functional team communication by moving from a “push” system to an electronic centralized “pull” system.