What to Expect During Your First 100 Days with MAJiK Visual Factory
Maybe you’ve spent some time on our homepage, you’ve watched our explainer video, or you’ve talked to colleagues in other facilities who are using MAJiK software, and you get the basics of what Visual Factory can do. That is, you know that Visual Factory will help you improve productivity, streamline operations, upgrade production quality, and be more innovative by using data to drive better decisions in your manufacturing operations.
But what is using Visual Factory software like on a day-to-day basis? In other words, what are the tangible changes you can expect to see in your plant and organization after going live, and when can you expect them?
We’ve walked countless MAJiK customers through each stage of implementation, and we’ve found patterns emerge in your first 100 days:
Before Day 1: Getting Ready for Go-Live
T-60 Days: Proposal
Every MAJiK Visual Factory project starts with a proposal that focuses on your manufacturing goals, success criteria, project roles, and a technical implementation plan.
You’ll be assigned a dedicated MAJiK Field Engineer who will work through this process with you so that everyone on your team has a single document that they can reference for the project plan.
During the proposal stage, you’ll talk with your Field Engineer about which integrations you’ll need and the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) you want to capture from your equipment. You’ll also involve a number of people within your organization. Typically, this includes the following roles:
Project Champion (you)
Project manager (not a bad idea to have this be a different person than your Champion for anything more than a Pilot Project)
IT Resource(s)
Maintenance leader
Production leader
Quality leader
T-30 Days: Project Kick-off
Once the proposal is finalized, it's time to kick off the project! This meeting will involve setting dates for the necessary integrations/technical deliverables, as well as assigning owners and a schedule for milestones. Although the MAJiK team does the technical heavy lifting on the implementation, the success of the roll-out ultimately depends on you and your team. You are the ones that drive the adoption and ensure that everyone on your team is on-board.
T-28 Days: Training
Training before implementation is complete? We’ve found that this simple adjustment can get you realizing gains in your manufacturing processes up to 50% faster.
Our process is to hold a one-hour weekly training session for the four weeks up to your go-live. This means that everyone on your team will already be familiar with the software and how to access key reports that will make their jobs easier on Day 1.
This gets you the most out of your investment immediately.
Go-Live
Day 1: Hit the ground running
Our team works with customers from the first day of using Visual Factory to ensure the data coming through is correct and being reported accurately. This isn’t something that’s sorted out in a day, however—we carefully monitor everything over a “hyper-care” period to make any necessary tweaks and set customers up for ongoing success.
Every piece of equipment is different and different signals and readings are needed to track Performance, Availability, Quality, and other Telemetry. We continue to work with you to ensure every KPI is tracked as accurately as possible.
Days 1-30: The “Bump”
Most clients experience an almost-instantaneous jump in productivity during their first couple of weeks using Visual Factory. Call it the gift of accountability: Displaying real-time productivity metrics on large-screen displays throughout the plant makes it hard to ignore work that needs to be done.
For most customers, this looks like more orders being shipped on time and overall productivity metrics improving.
Days 30-45: The Plateau
Of course, surges in productivity can’t continue at a staggering pace forever. After the first month or two, many customers experience somewhat of a plateau in productivity gains. Not to worry, though. It just means the obvious problems have been fixed and lags have been removed. In other words, it’s not a plateau at all—customers are simply operating at true level of productivity their plant can currently achieve.
Now comes the exciting part: Using MAJiK as a tool for analysis and continuous improvement. This is where customers start to implement real, sustainable, and continuous improvements at their facilities.
Days 45-90: Implementing OEE Tracking
Overall Equipment Effectiveness, or OEE, is a great metric to kick-start your understanding of your operation’s day-to-day lost productivity and low hanging fruit you can pick for improvement.
Your goal should not be to improve OEE.
OEE is a diagnostic tool that allows you to understand what your most pressing issues are and where areas of improvement can be found. Is it Equipment Availability, Production Performance, or Quality Yield that is constraining your critical path? Get everyone on the same page identifying these issues and fixing them. Choose the OEE component with the lowest score and start a Root Cause Analysis.
Note: Your area of focus may change several times over the course of implementing OEE tracking. This is normal and good. It means you’ve solved an issue and your bottleneck has shifted to a new area of your operations!
Days 90-100: Finding Root Causes with MAJiK Analysis Tools
Once you’ve pushed OEE to the limit, your focus will shift from “maximizing a score” to “understanding every issue”. Just like analyzing OEE helps facilities understand how they can improve equipment effectiveness, MAJiK’s Analysis Tool can help them understand the root causes of defects and problems—and start solving them.
Holding regular meetings with key decision-makers to dive into the data and performing root cause analyses using the Plan, Do, Check, Act cycle will go a long way to creating a problem solving culture and sustaining your gains.
Day 100 and Beyond: Partnership Through Continuous Improvement
Beyond the first 100 days of transformation and course-correction, it’s all about continuous improvement. At MAJiK, we see this as a partnership. At this point in a manufacturer’s journey with Visual Factory, data-driven decision making is the norm, and many customers come to us with ideas about how they can continue to use data to inform their facility’s future.
Want to start planning your own MAJiK journey? Talk to a MAJiK Field Engineer about kicking off your first hundred days today!