Which production loss should you investigate first?

Identify the loss before choosing the indicator

High consumption may be due to an additional load, an extended idle period or a different product. Reduced output may result from stoppages, slower cycles, rejects or a lack of demand. Each situation requires different information sources.

Before starting a project, management can specify the decision it needs to support: reorganising a cell, reviewing auxiliary use, modifying a process, strengthening maintenance or preparing an investment.

• Capacity: downtime minutes, production rate, active cavities and conforming output.
• Energy: measured supply, kWh by equipment and period, operating state and associated production.
• Quality: conforming quantities, defects and associated material where identified.
• Continuity: functional failures, event duration and actual asset exposure.

Value each loss using the relevant economic criteria

Parts that could have been made during a stoppage do not automatically represent lost sales. Economic assessment requires actual demand, the ability to recover the volume, contribution margin, incremental costs and constraints in downstream operations.

Energy attributed to a load is not automatically available for saving either: check whether that load is needed during preparation, drying, heating or temperature maintenance. Reject costs require defined treatment of material, reprocessing, time, treatment and disposal.

The initial assessment can describe physical quantities in their respective units. State the assumptions before combining them into a monetary total.

Information needed to select the next project

• Identify the asset, product and periods in which the problem is concentrated.
• Check which data are measured, which depend on operator input and which are still missing.
• Distinguish recurring losses from exceptional events and production changes.
• Specify the feasible intervention and the effect to be verified afterwards.
• Define instrumentation cost and complexity before extending the scope to all machines.

PM Tec Engineering, through its Industry 4.0 division, KERN IoP, supports a starting scope of specific measurement points and applications: ENERGY for selected electrical supplies, SMARTPRO for data capture and operational context, and MONITOR for reviewing and comparing available records.

Explore the platform architecture · Energy measurement by machine or cell

An improvement needs a follow-up comparison

Every intervention needs a baseline condition, a measured result and a follow-up period to establish whether the effect persists. Keep the electrical measurement boundary, product and counting criteria consistent whenever they are needed to interpret the difference.

If information is still insufficient, the first decision may be to instrument one machine, one circuit or a small set of signals before defining a larger project.

Continue with the problem you are assessing

• Quantify capacity affected by downtime
• Identify consumption during idle periods
• Verify an improvement after the intervention
• Return to the plant management page

This guide develops the ideas in KERN IoP’s original publications on installed capacity, cost per part and phased implementation. Claims about savings, productivity and return on investment require verifiable conditions.