3 Ways to Increase Manufacturing Productivity

Integrating wireless headset communication systems into your workflow can help you increase manufacturing productivity in three ways.

1. Hear, Talk and Protect Hearing on the Plant Floor

Factories are noisy places — whether they’re churning out dish soap or diapers. Even the most modern lines with precision tooling and computer-controlled automation make a lot of noise. And 47% of all manufacturing workers have been exposed to hazardous noise!

“Okay, we’ll have our safety manager hand out ear plugs,” you reason. But does that help us hear our coworkers?

Humans figured out the basics of noise attenuation early in our history, probably by jamming dirt or leaves in our ears. Soon, we discovered cotton balls or stayed with the old classic: sticking fingers in ears.

But when we plug our ears we block all sounds, including the mechanical alerts and voices we need to hear in order to maintain awareness in our work environment. Can we have both hearing protection and situational awareness?

Sonetics Wireless Headsets protect hearing while letting workers hear workplace sounds. The combination of hearing protection and team communication encourages workers to collaborate without removing mandatory hearing protection. And that does two things: helps prevent occupational noise-induced hearing loss, and prevents downtime. How? By removing the need to step away from the line, find a quiet room, or shut down equipment just to have a conversation.

2. Leverage Timely Communication for More Effective Training

Bringing on new employees with the right skills is only the first step in maintaining an experienced workforce. The goal is to get them up to speed quickly so they can become contributing team members.

Written procedures per workstation or task are great training aids. From there, time and repetition will help trainees become proficient at something new. That’s how we learn, right? And science backs that up. Neurons form bonds that strengthen with focus and frequent use, leading to easier recall when we’re exposed to new tasks.

With wireless communication headsets on, workers can hear a trainer’s clear, real-time instructions. Operators can focus and gain experience on a task. No one’s hovering, yelling, or straining to understand. Questions are answered in the moment.

A well-trained team is your competitive advantage in maintaining quality production and meeting output goals required to meet revenue projections.

3. Minimize the Costs of Downtime

The line’s reader board is our modern-day ticker tape, showing output and cycle time. More is better. Equally trackable are downtime incidents and their causes. Every minute the line is down equates to money lost.

Techs are conditioned to quickly respond to a tool breakdown. Two-way radios let you push-to-talk and call for an assist. Carts delivering materials and forklifts taking finished goods away can coordinate their timing based on verbal queues.

However, efficient teams have found ways to maintain throughput by letting employees send and receive notifications without stepping away from their workstation. Being able to easily communicate with support personnel gets everyone involved when it’s needed.

Sonetics Wireless Headsets help manufacturing companies increase productivity by providing unified communications that enhance safety, minimize downtime and increase overall efficiency.