Opportunities to improve business continuity through coding efficiency in VUCA times

VUCA - Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity. The ideal acronym to reflect the COVID-19 pandemic?

Changes to the way we all work due to COVID-19 presents an opportunity to reassess the way we operate. In terms of managing a manufacturing facility, it’s so important right now to create a sustainable production process which is robust and efficient. Here are some strategies for building agility into your coding operations to maintain business continuity.

More coding efficiency, more business efficiency

Very few manufacturing and production businesses could have prepared for such volatility and uncertainty of demand caused by COVID-19. Some customers are operating at 100%, and others are having to put in additional shifts or request their employees work on weekends to keep up with increased demand. It’s going to take some time for manufacturers to get back to more stable levels of productivity, so the need for your operations to be agile and efficient is more important than ever before. 

With that in mind, many manufacturers are reassessing their plans for redundancy and business continuity. A key area to address is your coding and marking operations. It’s crucial to remove unnecessary processes that are bloating your operations and leading to unnecessary costs.

From a coding perspective, that means it’s imperative to avoid printer failure, coding errors and poor-quality codes. Two of the biggest enemies of efficiency are unplanned downtime (caused by equipment failure) and overreliance on manual intervention, absorbing critical operator time, with the added risk of data entry error. That risk is compounded if you currently have fewer operatives on your floor due to social distancing.

How Domino can help

It’s crucial to make sure you have the right coding products for your specific output. But it’s also important to think beyond the type of coding equipment you’re using, pairing it with corresponding support services that allow your business to be agile, reactive and prepared for the unexpected.

Here at Domino, we support our customers with a variety of service methods based on their operational strategy: insourcing, outsourcing and automation.

Insourcing: As well as providing a variety of training packages, we can help to appoint an onsite coding champion for your business or supply you with guidance on spare stock holding.

Outsourcing: We can make sure you have the right coding infrastructure for your business, backing everything up with a comprehensive service plan and scheduled maintenance visits, with a minimum service level agreement (SLA) for response times. It means you can be sure that expert assistance will always be near when you need it. 

Automation: We can help you automate code deployment to remove the need for manual data entry on the printer. This can be combined with automated code verification to give you total confidence that the right code is applied, time after time. 

We are also happy to work flexibly with you to make it as easy as possible for you to achieve your ambitions. That includes working to short-term agreements that flex to peaks and troughs in your production cycle – as well as offering flexible payment options to purchase your choice of support services.

Managing your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

KPIs are only useful if they are measuring the right things. Now’s the time to reassess your KPIs to make sure they are giving you an accurate and honest view of your operational efficiency. We are happy to take a look at your coding operations and advise on the KPIs that you can monitor to make sure you are working efficiently.

Over to you…

Supply chains are currently stretched for everyone. Now is the time to make sure your coding operations are working as efficiently as possible. Don’t be afraid to tweak your operational model, or revisit the KPIs you are using to measure performance. Covid-19 has changed the world – and what made sense for your business twelve months ago in terms of operational agility, business continuity and redundancy may no longer meet your requirements in the post-Covid world.