What is the True Cost of Your Wasted Products and How Can You Reduce It?

The true cost of wasted products in process manufacturing industries goes far beyond the cost of lost product. It spills over into stockpiles, productivity, downtime and much more.

On the plus side, this means that as you reduce that waste it has a domino effect across your manufacturing process producing benefits you may not have expected.

We’ve got a lot of experience in helping customers identify and reduce their waste and gain benefits in line with their sustainability objectives. We’re pretty good at it in fact.

The True Cost of Waste

These are just a few of the key areas of waste where your sustainability targets will take a hit

The Causes of Process Manufacturing Waste

Waste products can occur at any stage of the manufacturing process, but the root cause of the waste may occur before or even after manufacture.

To start with, you could receive poor quality materials from suppliers. Caught early enough you may be able to rework the materials to specification, but if the issue is discovered later on then you’ve got a lot of wasted product.

If there are issues in the production process itself, such as temperature fluctuations, timing issues or mixing errors, then good products can become waste and the production efforts put into it are also wasted.

Finally, when things change at the customer end, you may find that demand drops so your stock goes out of date. These are just a few examples of what can happen, each one of them negatively affecting your sustainability. To get a better overview of your potential weak-spots you’d need a complete audit of your supply chain.

6 Things You Need to Know to Reduce Product Waste

Reducing waste and all of its associated costs is only possible if you have effective traceability giving you a clear overview of every step of the production process. Here’s what you need to know to reduce that waste:

Supplier·ingredients

Ensuring you keep track of exactly which ingredients have come from who is the first step in tracking the value of your suppliers.

Supplier quality

Supplier quality will influence your final product quality. If they aren’t consistent you need to know so that the issue can be addressed.

Process routing

Knowing which processes your products passed through can help you to identify processes that are affecting quality. This is key to continuous process improvement.

Lot confirmation

You must be able to confirm which lots have gone into making a product in order to track the processes and suppliers involved in production.

Process conditions

Do you know what the process conditions were when the product passed through? Patterns in variations in conditions can help you identify reasons for quality issues.

Stock location and condition

To efficiently manage your stocks you need to know where your materials are and how long they’ve got left.

Benefits Beyond Waste Reduction

Reducing waste through effective traceability won’t just reduce the amount of waste you’re producing. You’ll also get a number of other benefits:

Reduced stock

An improved RFT means you don’t need so much stock in reserve for when things go wrong.

Reduced lead times

If you’re not throwing it away it’s getting out to customers faster with more flexibility to respond to changing demand.

Improved customer experience

With solid traceability comes the ability to provide customers with evidence and assurance of your certifications.

Reduced product recalls

If you know where everything is at all times, there’s a much lower chance of off-spec quality slipping through the net.

Simplified regulatory compliance

With effective traceability in place compliance becomes part of the process rather than an additional task.

Improved Sustainability

All of these benefits will have a positive impact on your manufacturing sustainability credentials.

A Trusted Partner for Waste Reduction

Why does ATS have such a strong reputation for reducing waste in process manufacturing industries? Well, there are a number of reasons I can give you for but here are a few key ones.

First up, we have very strong process industry domain expertise. Having worked around the globe for over 30 years and successfully delivered over 5000 projects in the process manufacturing industries, we know what we’re talking about. We also apply and comply with all the relevant industry standards.

But most importantly, we’re Independent. We evaluate your requirements and then select, design and implement the solution that will best help you achieve your business goals, no matter the technology or process required.

As a trusted partner for sustainable manufacturing excellence solutions, ATS Global will help you reduce your waste and attain your business goals faster.