Phil Deaton is an Engineer that spent the last 15+ years developing systems and tools to optimize manufacturing facilities. He has a passion for learning new processes, finding ways to improve these processes, or creating a superior process. Through his work history and experiences in different manufacturing industries (chemicals, food products, medical devices, construction materials, and automotive parts), Phil has seen the benefits of cross-pollinating ideas among manufacturing industries. These experiences have allowed for quicker adaptation to new processes and avoidance of the difficulties others have experienced.
Phil has developed electronic tools that have helped drive new ways to increase employee productivity and allow for a newfound understanding of the underlying systems. He has worked on or built tools for the following type of issues:
- Monthly Inventory Reconciliation Process
- Production Scheduling & Raw Material Delivery Optimization
- Quality In-Process Checks Collection & Reporting*
- Long-Term Capital Project Planning and Justification
- Mechanical Integrity Inspection Forecasting and Compliance Tracking
- MRO Inventory Turns Analysis & Reorder Justification
- Manual Material Weigh out Operation Consistency*
*Spreadsheets were able to be validated in an FDA/cGMP facility
Other projects include using database software to track productivity output and break down trending, calculate operating efficiencies, track shift handover notes, and automating Lockout/ Tag-out procedures.
All the tools were developed to improve communication, reduce errors, or enhance documentation in a manufacturing workplace. Phil’s approach is that one size does not fit all and requires the adapting and customizing of these tools to be organization specific. Before developing any new tools, the following three steps ensure successful development.
Step 1: Understand the Business Need
What is not currently working? What metric is not meeting the current need? What is the leadership’s understanding of the barriers? Answering these questions will ensure that everyone is aligned, and the group can start to conceptualize what type of tools or systems are going to be needed.
Step 2: Investigate Current Status
An examination should be done to see what is currently in place and what methods have failed in the past. If possible, dissecting the past failures will allow us to understand the underlying causes of the failures and try to prevent the same thing from happening again. Together we can learn from your history and make informed decisions to develop the new processes for your business.
Step 3: Get on the Floor
Interacting with the people that will be tasked with using the new tools will help ensure that their feedback and thus support is captured from inception. A diverse team of believers and naysayers, who understand the why from the beginning will help ensure the tool is sustainable indefinitely. Discussions and modifications from the beginning ensure the final product matches their terminology, computer skills, and helps make their job easier, and more efficient.
By using these steps above and developing the right tools, previous organizations Phil has worked with have been able to improve uptime, decrease operator error, reduce dependency on manual workforces, and expand capacity. These types of problems are sometimes very difficult to solve, but D10 Consulting is up to the challenge to get you a solution.