Accelerate your Continuous Improvement initiatives with comprehensive real-time manufacturing performance data and insight.

Are you looking to accelerate your continuous improvement initiatives like Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma Manufacturing and Total Productive Maintenance? Epicor, formerly Solarsoft, drives your continuous improvement program with comprehensive real-time manufacturing performance data and insight - key aspects of any improvement program.

OEE and Continuous Improvement in Manufacturing

Continuous improvement methods such as Lean, Six Sigma and TPM, along with metrics like Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), are used to meet increasing demands on manufacturing operations.

A key aspect of any continuous improvement program is comprehensive capture and analysis of actionable, accurate manufacturing performance data.

Do you struggle with the deficiencies and controversies of manual data collection (stopwatches and clipboards) or high-risk, high-waste and high expense IT projects?

World-class manufacturers have found that Epicor MEI solutions (Informance EMI and Mattec MES) are the most effective way to quickly eliminate waste and identify performance opportunities, improve production efficiency, measure improvement and sustain improvement gains.

Lean Manufacturing

Lean Manufacturing is an approach to systematically eliminate waste. The goal is to incorporate less human effort, less inventory, and less space to become highly responsive to customer demand, all while producing top-quality products in the most efficient and economical manner. At the most basic level within a manufacturing environment Lean involves an "attack" on rework, inventory, unreliable equipment, poor quality, and unnecessary activity and labor.

Lean incorporates a number of tools and techniques that can be significantly enhanced by Epicor:

• Total Productive Maintenance
• Kaizen
• Single Minute Exchange of Dies (SMED)/Quick Changeover
• Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE)

Kaizen

Kaizen is an ongoing improvement process involving everyone, from executive managers to plant crews. A key aspect of Kaizen is to find and exploit new performance opportunities. In a manufacturing environment, performance opportunities are identified by examining the six major loss categories:

1. Breakdowns
2. Setup and adjustments
3. Idling and minor stops
4. Reduced speed
5. Start-ups
6. Defects and rework

Epicor MEI solutions together with the Epicor IMPACT methodology enhance your Kaizen Event (or Blitz) with the data and insight needed to quickly spot opportunities, take action, measure, and sustain gains.