A good key performance indicator (KPI) helps you track critical aspects of your operation, showing you exactly what you’re doing well and where you need to push for improvements. For production managers in manufacturing, KPIs are critical to repeating past successes and avoiding future failure.

KPIs help managers track the progress of their products, their team, and their organization in general. Using the right KPIs, production managers can include whatever metrics they want to track, such as product, revenue, costs, usage, or customer metrics and the progression of bringing products to market. 

And with that data, managers can make decisions, identify areas that need change to reach goals, and ensure the organization is moving in the right direction.

What does a production manager need to know?

Production managers need to know how to improve their production processes and organization in general. They also need to understand how to implement those changes and how to figure out the right order to get everything done. 

Using KPIs, production managers collect and analyze data to measure metrics of specific targets to find weak points in production. This way, managers have all the information they need to improve their organization. Production managers must know how high-level goals, objectives, and required actions can best interconnect.

Using a CMMS in manufacturing to track KPIs helps managers see this interrelationship easier by having all the data available in one place and updating it in real-time across the board. CMMS helps production managers organize their data and metrics to streamline their data analysis and boost efficiency, giving them the ability to spot and tackle weak points and inefficiencies easily.

What are the responsibilities if a production manager?

Managers need to be on top of all KPIs to ensure optimal productivity. Not tracking KPIs means being blind to weak spots within your organization’s production. And because you don’t know what’s wrong, you can’t even start the process of implementing changes.

It’s a production manager’s responsibility to:

  • Oversee budgets and timescales for clients and managers
  • Oversee production
  • Coordinate resources
  • Bridge the gap between sales and engineering
  • Create, plan and implement production schedules
  • Choose and order required materials 
  • Keep an eye on stock levels and ensure they are adequate

Tracking KPIs helps managers accomplish all of these. But there are a few spots where they can run into trouble, and often the worst is when they don’t have the right tools to track the right KPIs efficiently. Just as bad is not knowing which KPIs they should be tracking.

Using a CMMS helps production managers track KPIs, so they don’t have to worry about whether the data is accurate. How does it help? By keeping all your data in one spot, updating it in real time, and helping you crunch the numbers with automated reports.

What are some examples of KPIs production managers need to track?

KPIs help managers find inefficiencies and weak spots within an organization to improve their production floor efficiency. Here are some important KPIs you should be tracking.

Goods count / actual production

By tracking the end-product goods count and the actual production count, you help your organization lower production costs because you monitor the production process every step of the way. 

Due to possible impurities in the raw materials, some products may not come out up to standards. This KPI helps managers find where they need to make necessary improvements. By reviewing how many products are completed successfully and how much material was scraped, you can cut costs. 

Performance

You measure this KPI by tracking the output percentage of the expected production outcome. This is a very important KPI for all managers to track because it gives them the information they need to optimize machinery and organization performance. Managers get to see a clear picture of their organization’s productivity.

Availability

By keeping track of how many machines are available to use on the production floor, this KPI helps managers increase their production performance and gives them a clear insight into which machines are available and which aren’t. This way, managers find ways to optimize machines more to increase efficiency and organizational performance overall.

Quality

All production managers need to be aware of the quality of the products they produce. This KPI measures the number of goods produced in total and how many out of those were successful and up to quality standards. Tracking quality KPIs help managers gain long-term success and profits by comparing and maintaining the quality process, ultimately leading to increased quality of final products once managers find and fix weak points. 

Behind plan

Here, managers can see how many products they are below expectations, either due to a technical error or a disruption somewhere in the production process. Behind Plan KPIs help managers see how behind they are in terms of production and meeting goals. This way, they can implement a strategy to overcome any lag in the system.

Overall equipment effectiveness (OEE)

To find the OEE of your organization, use this equation. 

OEE =  availability X performance X quality

This KPI gives manufacturers a full understanding of how effective their machinery, equipment, and resources are, and allows them to see the overall productivity of the production line. Like many KPIs, tracking OEE helps managers find places where they can increase productivity. 

Manufacturing cycle time

This KPI gives production managers the information they need to see what areas they can improve and better optimize to increase output. 

Being on time and producing quality products boosts revenue. By tracking the manufacturing cycle time, production managers can track how much time it takes for the raw feedstock to make its way through all machinery and become a finished product. 

Throughput

This KPI is simple but vital. It helps managers measure the number of units produced through a machine, production line, or plant over a specific timeframe. Basically, it’s a measurement of how much the organization produced over a set amount of time.

Downtime

Whether it’s a machine breakdown or not, all managers want to reduce downtime within their organization due to the many ill effects on revenue and production. This KPI is key to helping managers better optimize their production time and output.  This way, managers avoid downtime and increase efficiency. 

How do you calculate production manager KPIs?

KPIs are measured by assessing the cost of maintenance and production. First, the production costs are divided by the costs of the number of manufactured units. Then, it uses the maintenance cost and divides it by the number of produced units during a certain period.   

These KPIs help evaluate the value and status currently of the metrics of a specified target and help you have a clearer view of how productive your systems currently are. This gives you the option to increase efficiency in areas you see are lagging behind.

Next steps

The best way to decide is to talk with something from the industry. All you need to do is find the right provider.

Hippo’s here to help you get the solution that works best for you, including answering your questions about maintenance management software, helping you book a live software demo, or even setting you up with a free trial.  

CEO summary

CMMS software solutions help maintenance departments keep critical assets online for less money by streamlining processes and capturing and leveraging reliable data. Unlike older management systems, a modern CMMS lives in the cloud, ensuring everyone has access to up-to-date data. Organizations across industries can see concrete benefits from the systems, including more uptime and less wasted time and money. When choosing a CMMS, it’s important to consider not only the features but also the complete user experience, including implementation, training, and ongoing support.

About The Author

Jonathan Davis

Jonathan has been covering asset management, maintenance software, and SaaS solutions since joining Hippo CMMS. Prior to that, he wrote for textbooks and video games.
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