1. Shurtape Technologies
    2.  | 
  2. Sustainability
    3.  | 
  3. Our Process
    4.  | How We Are Optimizing Equipment Effectiveness

Sustainability

How We Are Optimizing Equipment Effectiveness

Equipment

Identifying Opportunities for Improvement

In manufacturing, standardizing processes and procedures helps achieve a consistency that delivers efficiency and allows us to do our jobs more effectively. Without that standardization, we run the risk of:

  • Machines sitting idle
  • Energy waste
  • Raw materials waste
  • Variations in end products

Essentially, we are looking to enhance our overall equipment effectiveness – or OEE – to ensure we get the most productivity out of every utility hour, while continually delivering the quality product demanded in the market.

Opportunity: Less Downtime, Less Waste

In order to be better, we are always looking for opportunities for improvement, leveraging existing standards and philosophies to help guide our decisions and actions, including:

  • ISO Certification: The International Standards Organization (ISO) serves as a framework to manage how we do our work. ISO 9001 is a certification that applies to everything we do. We identify opportunities to improve and capture these as procedures.
  • Lean Six Sigma: LSS is a philosophy focused on reducing variation in any process. By adopting the DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) methodology, we dig into problems to identify root causes, then make improvements in a controlled fashion and verify those improvements in a controlled process.

With standard processes, we can do our work more effectively and efficiently. By focusing on variation, our processes become consistent and repeatable, thereby delivering a quality product solution. This also results in less downtime for improved OEE and less waste.

Result: Measurable Improvements

ISO Certification (Shurtape is currently ISO 9001:2015 certified in alignment with the latest standards) and LSS are important pieces of our overall manufacturing operations strategy, delivering savings related to:

  • Labor
  • Raw materials
  • Scrap

“Continuous growth is measurable and proven. Compared to a baseline year of 2015, we reduced waste 6.2% – or 445 tons indexed to production in 2020,” says Dan Krueger, Director of U.S. Manufacturing Operations. “For perspective, this waste reduction in tons is equivalent to the weight of 59 T-Rexes or 356,000 Ducks – both which are near and dear to our hearts!”

Visit ShurtapeTech.com to see what other steps we’re taking to improve our organization as a responsible business.