Data Intelligence for Operations

What Gets Measured Gets Done

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Data Intelligence for Operations

Have you ever heard the phrase, what gets measured gets done?

The notion is transparent enough, if you want something to be accomplished you have to not only plan for success, but also visualize progress towards your goals.

It is incredibly difficult to hold yourself accountable, or anyone else when you are not able to measure and visualize the output of your actions. You have to be able to see where you are going if you want to get there.

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If you are in operations, here are a few Key Performance Indicators you should consider adding to your team's dashboard to ensure you are moving towards your production goals.

Operational Efficiency Are you getting the most out of employees, departments, and machines? BI tools can help you see where the bottlenecks are in your operation so you can quickly resolve any issues.

ROI How much of a production multiplier was the investment you made in automation, employee training, and equipment upgrades? Did it have the impact you expected? Were there any unintentional results from your actions?

Number of Reworks This is a product quality metric. Dig in to how many reworks were ordered and the reason behind them, document them, then chart the reasons on your BI dashboard to see where your product and team needs the most improvement.

Number of Complaints Not all complaints will result in rework, so it is important to track them on their own and see if there is a pattern of offense that needs to be resolved. Look for patterns in complaints by department, product, and employee.

Schedule Variance You probably already have a sense of your team’s timeliness, but is it getting better or worse? Are there particular times of year that a particular team or individual falls behind? BI will help you connect the dots between your data points and uncover deep truths that explain why your business works the way it does.

Inventory vs Expected Sales This KPI spans both operations and sales but is a key metric to track. For instance, if you have an Amazon store you want to be able to see how much of a bump Cyber Monday is for you and for which products and make sure those products have an appropriate stock. That one is obvious, but maybe there are other production peaks that are less obvious and can only be tracked by comparing trends year over year.

If you need help collecting, cleaning, and visualizing your data, reach out to us to get started on your data project.

Originally published on 2021-02-26 by Royce Hall

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