How can you identify areas for improvement on a production line ?

Improving production line efficiency is a never ending process and there are many strategies that can be adopted for your particular production line, but before adopting any you should be able to identify and monitor the data that will be used to measure your productivity. Investing in a high speed camera is a great solution: find out why!

Measuring

Often implementing changes that at face value seem to be a good way to improve line productivity, but without data to analyse before selecting the improvement or being able to monitor the impacts then some changes often end up costing a company more money.

Therefore, putting in place imaging monitoring tools to measure and control the production environment can be a useful way with low investment to provide this required data. One interesting solution is high speed cameras with high fps provide visual imaging data that can be analysed in slow motion to provide detailed information in high resolution. Even on the fastest production line the high resolution slow motion capture provides unrivalled data that can help identify the areas of improvement. A high fps video camera combined with imaging software or even AI can provide extensive data on your production equipment, working methods, product behaviour in the process and these cameras can be configured in numerous ways. Studying the workflow is essential for any company before seeking to improve its system and any combination of tools or solutions should be considered in order to provide the correct data for this research and analyse.

For example there are several ways to improve production line efficiency.

• Employee training is often one factor examined by companies to improve productivity. Observe the video of worker practices before making that expensive training decision or use the video data to better target the training required.
• Preventive maintenance is another method adopted by companies to improve productivity. Using high speed cameras to monitor and examine in slow motion production line equipment can help identify areas that could be at risk.
• Organization is also a key factor analysed by companies. How much time does a worker need to move across the production floor? Tracking this with camera imaging makes it extremely simple.
• Stock control though not directly on the production line can have a major impact on downtime. Having a visual camera imaging with software to count and record inventory levels in real time can be invaluable.
• Product behavior is often very hard to monitor during the production process and with high speed fps in slow motion the interactions of the product with production line equipment can be studied in detail.
• Environment can be extremely important in certain industries, but all production lines should be clean and tidy. High speed cameras can help detect anything from foreign materials to tools left being on the production line.

Advantages

Obviously the biggest advantage is the high speed camera visual data in high resolution, high fps but there are others to consider. Having a tool such as these high speed cameras allow a company to analyse the production flow before selecting any expensive improvement. The high speed video camera data is not just useful for deciding on which changes are required, but also for long term monitoring of these changes, linked to key performance indicators, quality and workflow monitoring to mention but a few.

• Low or no installation cost for the high speed video cameras which are flexible and easily attached anywhere on the production line.
• No impact on the production process with remote camera control configuration
• No health or security impacts as cameras present no contamination risk in certain domains such as food production or pharmaceutical industry.
• Self powered with integrated light if needed, so no interference with production systems.
• Automatic recording and configurable setups for any environment.
• Able to work in confined spaces, harsh or dangerous conditions.