Why Monitor Waste and Recycling?
The journey to Net Zero must involve careful and conscious monitoring by wire and cable manufacturers. However, it’s not always a straightforward process, and we understand that it can be a daunting journey to Net-Zero. Nevertheless, we know some top tips that successful wire and cable factories are implementing to simplify that journey.
1. A strategy for waste management
In simple terms, a strategy helps define goals and achieve your long term aims. So what is your current strategy? Are you setting SMARTER goals to achieve effective waste management? Are all your stakeholders, staff and suppliers buying into this strategy, and do they understand the exact reasons why you are trying to implement specific processes? These are all valuable yet straightforward questions to ask yourself to help keep on track with waste management in your business.
2. Adhering to lean manufacturing principles
Lean principles encompass all procedures within manufacturing that focus on reducing waste.
- A core focus on faster design, production and delivery will always have a positive effect on your business bottom line
- Waste tends to lead to inferior quality products and passing the cost on to your customers
- Most waste comes from inefficiencies in your factory, including labour, energy, extra time and time spent developing products that don’t meet market demands. A 360 view of waste is an effective way to improve your factory.
- Respecting the talent of your engineers and hiring – Most engineers want a job that enriches their experience and challenges them along with a good salary. Still, they should also want to be at the forefront of developing new ideas to make things leaner and more effective. This is invaluable when looking to make processes and production leaner.
3. Reduce wastage of cable material
As well as time, labour, and efficiencies, we come onto probably the most obvious factor, which is always a key objective for any wire and cable manufacturer – Reducing material waste.
Are you tracking orders through your entire production process? A manufacturing execution system (MES) can drastically improve this by maintaining inventory, assessing what is on the shop floor in real time, and making sure the right materials are on hand to complete the orders. It will also eliminate human error, automating manual processes that have relied on the team to implement in the past.
4. Utilising ERP
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) modules handle all aspects of the business processes, including:
- Understanding production capacity
- Risk assessments
- Forecasting
- Inventory control
- Waste management
To deliver the next level of savings in materials and the reduction of scrap and re-work, the integration of MES with ERP and cable design software offers an exponential return that enhances every aspect of the manufacturing lifecycle.
Production planning enables a clear understanding of production capacity with bottleneck planning inventory control and waste management.
Who is Cimteq?
Cimteq is the market-leading software provider for the global wire and cable manufacturing industry.
Powered by state-of-the-art technology, Cimteq’s innovative software and support services enable manufacturers across the globe to be more profitable through improved productivity and streamlining of business and manufacturing processes.
Cimteq’s design and costing software, CableBuilder Enterprise, is now used in hundreds of factories worldwide to simplify the complex management of cable-design data, from the initial design concept to delivering the full bill-of-materials directly to the ERP system.
Strengthening the CableBuilder offering, Cimteq recently launched CableBuilder Go. Developed specifically for single-factory and smaller wire and cable manufacturers, this innovative software drives improvements such as faster design and quotations and more accurate costing.
Cimteq further aims to support wire and cable manufacturers to effectively plan, manage and control every aspect of the manufacturing process with the Cable Manufacturing Execution System (CableMES). This software uses the latest industrial Internet of Things (IoT) technology to optimise large-scale cable manufacturing operations.
Demonstrations of all products and consultations are available.
