Smart Manufacturing Kaizen Level - Your guide to digital manufacturing success
SMKL (Smart Manufacturing Kaizen Level) is an evaluation index of the level of data utilisation in factories. It can help you make investment decisions by showing the purpose, impact, and relationship between each investment step to make your factory smarter and more efficient.
Main factors for advanced digital manufacturing
SMKL evaluates how advanced a company's digital manufacturing level is by looking at two main factors, one is the Maturity Level and the other is the Management Level.
Together, these two axes provide a comprehensive evaluation of digital manufacturing capabilities, highlighting both the technical advancement and the management's effectiveness in implementing and using digital manufacturing technologies.
Maturity Level - The level of visibility
The level of data visibility is represented by the maturity level, shown on the vertical axes of the SMKL model.
Level A is defined as “Data collection”
Level B as “Visualization”
Level C as “Analysis”
and Level D as “Optimization”.
Management Level - The granularity of the items to be managed
The horizontal axes represents the granularity, or level of detail for the items to be managed.
Level 1 is defined as the company’s “Worker”
Level 2 as “Workplace”
Level 3 as “Factory” and Level 4 as “Whole supply chain”.
The value of SMKL
- Start “smartification” from the most appropriate point according to the current level and goals of each factory
- The modular approach lets you carry out “smartification” step by step
- Calculating and measuring the ROI achieved at each step is essential for investment decisions
- Optimisation can occur at every level, all the way up to the entire factory and the whole supply chain, leading to significant business improvements (tackling a variety of management issues)
The main chances of SMKL
SMKL offers two key benefits for your digital manufacturing business: reducing costs and increasing productivity. By identifying, and visualising issues in the manufacturing processes and optimising those the SMKL strategy leads the way to a smarter factory.
Results of performing visualised operations
Overall production efficiency increased by 30%.
- Training time for workers reduced by 65%
- 18% faster production switchover between models
- Assembly time reduced by 12% on average
Issue
Low production efficiency and uncontrollable cost management
- Work speed and errors vary depending on the worker
- Cannot tell which worker is making a mistake and how often
Implementation
Introduce support tools for the assembly process to the workplace
- Demonstrate the procedure
- Collect and analyze data on working hours and mistakes
Improvements
Significant cost reductions by improving worker efficiency through minimizing operational mistakes
- Increased workers’ productivity through faster processing with less assembly errors
- Understand the work status of all workers, identify common mistakes which require process or design correction and who needs retraining
- Reduce unnecessary actions and redundant checking
Based on this result, we will realize overall cost reduction by expanding the investment target to the entire factory.
Results of SMKL energy saving measures
Energy saving approx. 4588,80 euro/year.
- Investment amount (for system introduction): 11472,00 Euro.
- Payback less than 30 months.
Issue
High power consumption and running costs
- Cannot grasp the power consumption of each line and/or facility
- Cannot identify where the waste is occurring
Implementation
Measure energy use on each line and piece of equipment, and visualize on a dashboard
Improvements
Successful control of energy consumption
- Able to identify and analyze machines/locations with higher than expected energy consumption
- Allows additional general control measures to be implemented at a machine or line level, with added flexibility to take temporary pre-emptive actions during fault conditions until the situation is corrected
Based on this result, an overall cost reduction was achieved. The change will now be applied to the entire factory.
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Curious about SMKL and Smart Manufacturing? Discover more with our detailed white paper for an in-depth look at these exciting topics. Register below to download the free white paper and explore further how SMKL could impact your business.
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![Maturity Level - The level of visibility [SMKL]](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt5412ff9af9aef77f/blte2f2f537e1f3b678/667eb500664f7e53d6732c03/Maturity-Level.png?auto=webp&quality=100&format=jpg&disable=upscale)
![Soldering - Two workers [SMKL]](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt5412ff9af9aef77f/blt9e8a8dbf01c8197b/668522d0ef2bb272c51c74c1/Issue_SMKL.jpg?auto=webp&quality=100&format=jpg&disable=upscale)
![[Graphics] Working with SMKL](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt5412ff9af9aef77f/blt0077d83b3c5d9cba/66852414ca9a047e291be7b6/implementation_Smkl.jpg?auto=webp&quality=100&format=jpg&disable=upscale)
![Manufacturing building - Cost reduction [SMKL]](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt5412ff9af9aef77f/blta935009566bfe033/6687f25a184b2a3966f4ca58/issue_cost_reduction.jpg?auto=webp&quality=100&format=jpg&disable=upscale)
![Implementation Cost reduction [SMKL]](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt5412ff9af9aef77f/blt3ed33a025c9b435f/6687f2925afb53528c05fb9a/implementation_costreduction.jpg?auto=webp&quality=100&format=jpg&disable=upscale)
![[Thumbnail] Renault E-Motor Production](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt5412ff9af9aef77f/blt360bb15cdf329a7b/67321868fdb3ea16727e2b22/renault_TN.jpg?auto=webp&quality=100&format=jpg&disable=upscale)