Best Way to Clean Stainless Steel in Your Plant

Stainless steel is incredibly durable, but dirt and other contaminants can cause it to break down and deteriorate. However, implementing the proper cleaning methods can help to ensure durability and longevity for the stainless-steel parts and equipment in your plant.

Below are some of the best ways to clean stainless steel in your plant.

Power Washers

Best Way to Clean Stainless Steel Power washers are used as a general cleaning tool in many manufacturing plants. They use high-pressure water jets to clean large, flat stainless steel surfaces. The water pressure produced allows these washers to effectively remove tough contaminants like dirt and rust with ease.

While the high pressure can make it easier to clean stainless steel, they only cover large areas, so they won’t be able to clean small crevices. On top of that, the water pressure they produce can potentially damage systems and small items. With that said, it’s best not to use this tool to clean internal parts.

Immersion Cleaners

If you need a more precise clean, immersion cleaners can help. Immersion cleaners use different substances to remove various contaminants from irregularly shaped stainless steel parts. For example, solvent cleaners like acetone will help to break down oil and grease. All you have to do is soak the part into the cleaning materials.

Best Way to Clean Stainless Steel However, immersion cleaners can produce harmful vapors. That’s why it’s important to make sure that your immersion cleaning system comes with an enclosure. This will control the production of vapors and hazardous materials and prevent health issues caused by inhalation.

Industrial Cleaning Systems

Plants that need to clean many parts frequently can consider industrial cleaning systems. These can wash several stainless-steel parts at one time to improve manufacturing process times and efficiency. Plus it can help to minimize labor costs.

Industrial cleaning systems can wash metal shavings, polishing compounds, casting sand, machine oil, and all sorts of foreign materials from stainless steel. However, not all industrial cleaning systems are the same. Some systems are designed specifically to clean certain parts. So consider the intricacy of your stainless-steel parts to ensure that you choose the right cleaning system for your plant.

Manual Cleaning

While these tools and systems can help you clean stainless steel parts, manual cleanings are still considered to be the best option for cleaning.

Cleaning stainless steel by hand can help you get into small crevices machines and tools can’t reach. However, you may need to use toxic and abrasive chemicals depending on the material that needs to be removed. With that said, it’s important to implement safety precautions ensure that all workers and systems are protected.

On top of that, manual cleanings can be expensive in terms of labor costs. So consider your budget to determine if this is the best option for your company.

Cleaning stainless steel can be a tedious task for any manufacturing company. But if you want to ensure that you produce a high-quality product and more efficient systems, it’s a task that needs to be done, and these methods can help.

To learn more, check out CPV Manufacturing’s blog.

How to Calculate and Budget Manufacturing Overhead

Manufacturing overhead expenses are unavoidable. All businesses must consider these costs in their budgets to ensure financial stability and an efficient production process.

To help your business perform smoothly and efficiently and maintain financial stability, here’s how to calculate and budget for manufacturing overhead.

Calculate Manufacturing Overhead Costs

To properly budget manufacturing overhead for your company, you first have to determine the exact overhead costs for each month.

Manufacturing overhead costs refers to anything that helps the production process run as smoothly as possible. These costs can include wages for machine handlers, quality control inspectors, and other workers that work directly to ensure proper production. It can also refer to the costs of equipment repairs and maintenance. Manufacturing overhead costs can also be facility fees such insurance, utilities, and property taxes.

Note: Manufacturing overhead costs don’t include money spent on direct labor or direct materials for your company.

Calculate Overhead Percentage

Once all monthly manufacturing overhead costs have been calculated, you need to determine the overhead percentage. This indicates the percentage that you’ll need to pay for manufacturing overhead every month.

To do this, take your monthly overhead costs and divide it by your company’s monthly sales. Then multiply it by 100.

For example, if your company has $100,000 in monthly manufacturing overhead and $600,000 in monthly sales, the overhead percentage would be about 17%. This means 17% of your monthly revenue will go toward your company’s overhead costs.

Budgeting for Manufacturing Overhead

Manufacturing Overhead With the overhead percentage calculated, you’re ready to develop an overhead budget. This process is simple and can provide great financial benefits for any company.

The best way to budget for manufacturing overhead is to set aside the amount of money needed to cover all overhead costs. The amount should be equal to the overhead percentage calculated from your costs divided by your monthly revenue.

Just remember that manufacturing costs as well as sales can vary from month to month. So always make sure that you keep an eye on both numbers and make adjustments as needed to ensure that your company always has enough for all overhead costs.

In Case of High Overhead Percentage

On top of that, the overhead percentage should always be low. This means that your business is using its resources more efficiently and effectively. So if your overhead percentage is high, you may want to consider improving your production process. For example, investing into energy-efficient manufacturing parts and machinery could help reduce operation costs.

You can also adjust your products’ selling prices. Doing this can bring in more revenue so you can have the additional funds needed to cover high overhead costs.

Manufacturing overhead is a necessary part of running a business. While it can be costly, tracking these expenses and sticking to a proper budget can help you to determine just how efficiently your company is performing and even help reduce overhead costs in the future.

Check out CPV Manufacturing’s blog for more tips.

Lean Manufacturing Principles: Steps to the Ideal Lean Manufacturing System

Many businesses struggle with lean manufacturing implementation. However, incorporating lean into your company isn’t as difficult as it seems. In fact, it only takes a few steps and an understanding of its principles.

Read on to learn more about the principles of lean and the steps needed to implement an ideal lean manufacturing system.

Purpose of Lean Manufacturing

Lean manufacturing is designed to help companies eliminate waste within their production process to promote productivity and ensure high-quality products. These wastes are categorized into three groups. Muri refers to the waste and bottlenecks created when workers and systems are overexerted. Mura refers to the waste created when there’s unevenness in the production system.

Finally, Muda refers to the seven types of waste listed below.

Defects
Overproduction
Transport
Overprocessing
Inventory
Motion

These activities don’t add value and result in wasted time, resources, and revenue.

Implement Lean with Lean Manufacturing Principles

All of the waste created in the production process can be reduced or eliminated by understanding the lean manufacturing principles.

These principles are the steps you need to take to implement lean into your company. When you understand these principles, your business can be more efficient and productive.

These are five lean manufacturing principles:

Lean Manufacturing Principle: Value

The overall goal of lean manufacturing is to help businesses create products that consumers want and need while reducing operation costs.

With that said, it’s important to first understand the value of your product as defined by your customers. To do this, identify what the customer is willing to pay for your product and base its price on that. You also want to make sure that your products meet their specific requirements or expectations.

Lean Manufacturing Principle: Value Stream

After the customer value of your product has been determined, map out the value stream, or all of the steps needed to make and deliver a product. Doing this will allow you to easily spot and remove unnecessary steps to reduce production waste and costs and to improve efficiency. It will also help you to find opportunities to improve the overall production processes to better create high-quality products in a timely and cost-effective manner.

Lean Manufacturing Principle: Flow

Once the waste has been removed from the value stream, you need to make sure that the manufacturing processes flows smoothly. This includes ensuring that there are no interruptions or delays in the production process.

Lean Manufacturing Principle: Pull

When everything is flowing smoothly, you can get your products to your customers and to the market quickly and easily. With that said, consumers will be able to pull or request products from you as needed without having to worry about long wait times. This principle also helps you to create only the necessary amount of product to avoid excessive inventory or storage costs.

Lean Manufacturing Principle: Perfection

The last principle of lean manufacturing is perfection. Considered to be the most important principle, perfection helps businesses to understand that lean isn’t static. With time, trends can lead to changes in the process and your company. To ensure that your business takes advantage of all of the benefits that lean manufacturing offers, you must be willing to make improvements to the process when needed. This will help to ensure consistent waste reduction and promote productivity and efficiency for years to come.

For more information to improve the efficiency of your manufacturing business, check out manufacturing articles.

Advantages & Disadvantages of Flexible Manufacturing System

Flexible manufacturing systems are becoming a prominent part of manufacturing businesses around the globe. They provide a number of production benefits and help companies to achieve greater success. However, there are a few things you need to consider before implementing a flexible manufacturing system to your business.

To help you understand the advantages and disadvantages of a flexible manufacturing system, read the guide below.

If you need valves and fittings for your manufacturing business, learn more about why we are the trusted Valve and Fittings Manufacturer in the USA.

What is a Flexible Manufacturing System?

A flexible manufacturing system is designed to react and adapt to changes within the production process, including any unexpected issues or problems. Since the 1970s, flexible manufacturing systems have helped companies to create products quickly and more efficiently.

Flexible manufacturing systems today still work to improve the production process and offer two types of flexibility. Machine flexibility refers to how much a system can change in order to create new product types. It also describes how a system can change the order of operations on a specific part.

The second category is routing flexibility. This is the ability of a system to use many machines to perform the same operations on one part. It also refers to how much a system can adapt changes in volume, capacity, or capability.

Disadvantages of a Flexible Manufacturing System

There are a few disadvantages of flexible manufacturing systems that many companies should consider. The most important is that implementing them in the production process can be complicated. It requires extensive planning, which can involve creating detailed designs and schedules.

Flexible manufacturing systems also require highly skilled employees to operate the machinery. Salaries for these workers can be expensive. Plus, because these systems are so complicated, a different set of skilled workers is needed for maintenance and repairs. Compensation for these employees can be quite costly as well.

Above all, purchasing or adapting machinery will be expensive. With that said, flexible manufacturing systems are mainly available to larger companies because they have enough revenue to invest in the systems and maintain them.

Advantages of a Flexible Manufacturing System

Although the disadvantages of flexible manufacturing systems can make some companies wary of them, it’s important to understand that their benefits will outweigh their drawbacks in the long run.

For example, flexible manufacturing systems may be expensive to implement and add to your company at first. However, they’ll help you save money in the future. They reduce the costs of operation because their ability to adapt to changes helps to prevent defective products as well as wasted time and resources. On top of that, they require fewer workers to operate them compared to other manufacturing systems, so companies can save on labor costs.

But perhaps the biggest benefit of flexible manufacturing systems is that they help companies become more efficient. They work to keep everything running smoothly in most situations. If something within the process changes, they can easily adapt and keep production flowing to reduce delays and bottlenecks. This helps to create faster production times and, as a result, increased customer service and satisfaction.

Flexible manufacturing systems may have a few disadvantages but not enough to negate their benefits. Though costly at first, flexible manufacturing systems will help businesses to create better products, become more efficient, and increase revenue as time goes on.

To learn more about manufacturing systems and other industry tools, read CPV Manufacturing’s blog now or contact us today.

What is Lean Manufacturing?

What is lean manufacturing? Lean manufacturing, or lean, has helped to reduce waste and improve productivity and efficiency for many manufacturing companies across the globe. However, few actually understand the concept of lean and its benefits.

So to help you understand how this process can improve your company, we’ve provided everything you need to know about lean manufacturing below.

Lean Manufacturing History and Overview

What is Lean Manufacturing? Lean manufacturing is the process of eliminating or minimizing waste within a manufacturing system. While the process in part dates back to Venice in the 1450s, lean wasn’t fully integrated until 1913. During this time, Henry Ford implemented the process to enhance his production lines of the Model T Ford.

However, today’s philosophy of lean wouldn’t be developed until the 1930s when Toyota created the Toyota Production System. This, as well as a few key principles, helped companies to create high-quality products that customers would find valuable while eliminating waste in the production system. As a result, these principles would also help to ensure efficiency and productivity.

These types of waste are categorized as:

Muda: Additional activity during manufacturing that’s not needed
Muri: Waste created from overburden in manufacturing processes
Mura: Waste created from unevenness in the manufacturing process

Principles of Lean Manufacturing

To eliminate these wastes, Toyota developed five principles that would become an integral part of lean manufacturing today:

Value: Understanding the value customers see in your products
Value Stream: Eliminate waste from the production processes
Flow: Ensuring that all production steps flow without bottlenecks or delays
Pull: Producing products as needed to avoid overstock and delay
Perfection: Continuously improving the manufacturing process to eliminate waste and ensure efficiency and productivity

Benefits of Lean Manufacturing

What is Lean Manufacturing? The purpose of lean manufacturing is to help companies create products without having to deal with waste and bottlenecks during the production process. Essentially, lean helps companies to provide their customers with the valuable products they need when they need them without having to worry about costs and slow delivery times.

However, customers aren’t the only ones who benefit from this process. With lean manufacturing, companies can experience better production rates, which means better efficiency and higher revenue. This is because lean manufacturing works to eliminate unnecessary operation costs.

For example, lean helps to remove additional steps in the production process that aren’t required to properly manufacture a product. Taking unnecessary steps out of the process cuts costs and production time.

Lean also helps businesses to create better products the first time, as it works to enhance the overall manufacturing process. This means companies will produce fewer defective products, leading to reduced inspections and repeat production costs.

Lean manufacturing has a history of helping companies achieve great success. So take the steps needed to eliminate the waste from your manufacturing process so you can experience increased efficiency, productivity, and profitability.

To learn more about creating the ideal lean manufacturing system, check out our article, Lean Manufacturing Principles: Steps to the Ideal Lean Manufacturing System.

How to Audit Your Manufacturing Business: Quality Control Audit Checklist

Do you know how to audit your manufacturing business? A common way of doing so is through a quality control audit which is a vital part of any manufacturing business. It helps to ensure that all processes are working effectively so your company can produce products more efficiently and minimize overall operation costs.

There are critical steps to properly perform a quality control audit. Here’s a checklist of everything you need to do to learn how to audit your manufacturing business.

How To Audit Your Manufacturing Business Successfully

1. Select Audit Type

How to Audit Your Manufacturing Business You must identify the focus and goal you want to achieve with the audit. From there, you can select one of the following three audit types that best meets your specified objectives:

System audits evaluate a company’s management systems and make sure that all elements and processes are effective. This type of audit also ensures that the development and implementation of these systems meet specified requirements. For example, a quality management system audit will review a company’s existing quality system to make sure that it fits with company policies and required regulations.

Product audits examine the services and products that a company offers to ensure they’re compliant with performance standards as well as customer, government, and company quality standards.

Process audits ensure that all company processes are performing efficiently within their established limits. This type of audit will check operation time and responsiveness as well as the effectiveness of each procedure and process specifications.

2. List Tasks and Perform Audit

quality control audit Based on the audit you need, you’ll have to perform specific tasks to accurately measure the performance and effectiveness of a specific area. When it’s time to perform the audit, list each task in a series of steps. Make sure that you follow each step to ensure that nothing is missed.

3. Record Findings in Audit Report

When the audit is complete, have your auditors create an audit report to document all of their findings. Review each report and schedule a meeting to discuss the issues listed.

4. Determine and Conduct Corrective Action

Using the reports, determine and perform corrective actions that could fix the company issues listed. Take note of everything you do to resolve each problem in a separate report. This will help you to keep track of the methods you try and help you to better choose corrective actions in the future.

5. Schedule a Follow-Up Audit

After a corrective action is completed, perform another audit to measure changes caused by the corrective action. If system processes, performance, or products improve and are more efficient and effective, record your findings in a separate audit report and discuss it. Then you can close the audit.

If findings indicate minimal or no changes in processes, performance, or products, take note of this in a separate audit report and determine a new corrective action. Continue this pattern until things improve.

Company audits are the key to ensuring efficient processes and quality products and services. So use the checklist above to make sure that you do everything to perform a successful audit for your company.

Check out CPV Manufacturing’s blog for more industry tips.

M2M Technology in Manufacturing: Drive Efficiency and Lower Costs with M2M Solutions

With the manufacturing industry getting more and more advanced each day, M2M technology has become one of the most indispensable tools for every warehouse.

M2M, or machine-to-machine, technologies allow devices connected to the same network to communicate. Essentially, they let them send information to other connected devices and perform actions automatically without human intervention.

Benefits of M2M Technology

As stated, these technologies are becoming one of the most indispensable amenities for manufacturing companies. But how exactly do M2M technologies drive efficiency and lower costs?

M2M Remote Monitoring

In the past, plants required workers to actively assess the performance of each system. Now, M2M technologies are revolutionizing how companies monitor manufacturing process.

M2M technologies uses advanced sensors and chips to monitor a machine’s overall state and performance. If vibrations, temperature, pressure changes, and other signs of mechanical failure are detected, the system automatically communicates this information to other connected devices, allowing workers to spot and resolve problems faster.

On top of that, these technologies help to enhance machine performance and productivity. Since M2M connected devices can spot warning signs and relay problems almost instantly, companies can deliver all of the preventative maintenance tasks to preserve the machines longevity and ensure an efficient performance.

M2M Asset Tracking Technology

M2M technology M2M technologies also allow manufacturing companies to track product shipments, storage conditions, and inventory. Sensors attached to pallets and boxes communicate their location and status to connected devices at your plant so you can better keep an eye on your products.

These sensors can also monitor the condition of certain products. When connected to containers storing chemicals, food, or beverages, they can provide real-time updates on each product’s temperature and overall state so you can better respond to problems to avoid contamination, spillage, or other storage issues.

M2M Cloud Computing Technology

Cloud computing services and M2M technologies work hand-in-hand in the manufacturing industry. With the cloud, connected machines and devices can be accessed virtually anywhere in the world. This makes it easier to stay on top of your company’s systems, maintain connected machines, and apply necessary software updates.

However, the biggest benefit of cloud M2M services is that they’re known to be a cost-effective data storage option for many manufacturing companies. Hosted cloud services eliminate the need to purchase, store, and maintain in-house servers. As a result, companies don’t need to worry about costly server maintenance tasks or software updates.

Drive Efficiency and Lower Costs With M2M Technology

M2M technologies are fairly new, but they’ve already made a positive impact on the manufacturing industry. With their ability to improve system monitoring process, data storage, and product management, M2M technologies are sure to revolutionize how all manufacturing companies operate in the near future.

Learn more about the technology that’s streamlining the manufacturing process.

Quality Assurance vs. Quality Control: Which is Right for You?

Quality assurance (QA) and quality control (QC) can help manufacturers create great products. But contrary to popular belief, QA and QC aren’t the same. Each of these processes is designed to improve specific stages of the manufacturing process.

Read on to learn more about the difference between quality assurance and quality control.

Quality Assurance

Quality Assurance vs. Quality Control Quality assurance monitors production operations and helps to improve the manufacturing process and prevent defects in the finished product. Common QA tasks include process planning, checklists, and systems operation audits.

Everyone on the company’s production team is responsible for QA. This means that anyone who comes in contact with the product in any part of the production process must ensure that the product being created meets the appropriate standards.

QA can streamline manufacturing processes and have systems operate more efficiently. As a result, QA also helps to increase production revenue and minimize overall operation costs.

Quality Control

Quality control is a process that ensures products meet all company and government standards before entering the market. QC tasks are performed when the development and creation of a product is complete. These tasks consist of inspecting and testing the finished product.

Quality Assurance vs. Quality Control Companies designate a specific team that’s solely responsible for QC. This team will look over the finished items and test each one for errors and defects.

Overall, QC is meant to benefit the customer. Ensuring that all finished products are compliant with every appropriate standard helps to make sure that your customers get the high-quality product they need. This can lead to repeat business, a growing consumer base, and a better reputation for your company.

On top of that, QC can help your manufacturing company to avoid product recalls due to safety issues or improperly constructed parts. Recalls are known to be costly for many businesses. For example, CNN Money reported that General Motors spent $4.1 billion in repairs, victim compensation, and other expenses when 30.4 million of its cars and trucks were recalled in 2015.

Quality Assurance vs. Quality Control

QA and QC are beneficial to all parts of production, from start to finish. That’s why it’s best to implement both QA and QC tasks.

As stated, performing both QA and QC processes benefits your company and your customers. When QA audits and checklists are implemented, problems in production are spotted and resolved more frequently, resulting in a more seamless and efficient manufacturing process as well as fewer defects in the finished product.

When you add QC inspections and tests to your processes, you can guarantee that the product your customer gets is of the highest quality to ensure complete consumer satisfaction.

QA and QC may be two different processes, but when used together, both can help your company to produce better products, minimize costs, and improve customer retention rates.

For more tips on how to improve your manufacturing company, check out CPV Manufacturing’s blog.

How to Design a Cost-Effective Warehouse: Optimizing Your Warehouse Layout Design

While the economy and industry trends are important, nothing plays a bigger role in ensuring warehouse operation success than layout and design. With a well-designed warehouse, your facility can become more cost-effective and productive.

Here are a few tips to help you optimize your warehouse layout design.

Plan for Expansions

According to Cisco-Eagle , it’s always better to have future capacity and not need it than need the extra capacity but not have it. Simply put, you always want to make sure that your warehouse can accommodate for any potential future short- or long-term expansions.

So plan ahead. Make sure that you design the layout of your warehouse to cater to any unexpected shifts in business, inventory, or process changes. For example, you may want to have extra space within your facility just in case you need to store more product or parts.

A good way to ensure that you have extra space is to install taller pallet racks or a mezzanine with more weight capabilities than what’s currently needed. This will help you to avoid costly expansion expenses in the future.

Make and Follow Process Maps

Assess how your warehouse works on a day-to-day basis. Are there any parts in the layout that are causing bottlenecks and slow production? If so, you need to optimize the layout of your warehouse to ensure smooth and efficient workflows.

Make a process map that details how your facility currently runs and where each zone is located. Then pick out the areas that need to be changed.

Next, create a new process map with the layout changes made. For example, if you noticed a bottleneck in production and packing, the new process map may have the packing zone moved so it can easily meet the demands of production.

Ensure That Each Zone Has the Right Equipment

Each zone of your warehouse must have the right equipment and capacity to ensure that the facility runs as smoothly and efficiently as possible. So before you start optimizing the design of the warehouse, make sure that each zone features the proper systems for operation.

You also want to make sure that each system and tool is working. Run tests and diagnostics to spot any issues and have problematic systems repaired or replaced as soon as possible to avoid catastrophic and costly failures.

Accommodate for Inbound and Outbound Shipments

Above all, analyze the number of shipments and how they’re going in and out of your warehouse and accommodate the layout to them. Try implementing a clear pick path to help workers ship products to consumers faster and easier.

Also consider your warehouse’s dock capacity. The dock must have enough capacity to cater to everything that’s being shipped to the warehouse. Facilities with insufficient dock capacities may experience severe decreases in operations as well as loss of revenue.

Having a well-designed warehouse is one of the biggest factors to a business’ success. A warehouse that’s properly laid out helps to increase productivity and reduce operation costs. So consult this guide and take the steps needed to optimize your warehouse.

Contact CPV Manufacturing to learn more about the valves, fittings, and other products you may need to optimize your warehouse.

Developing an Effective Quality Inspection Process for Your Plant

Developing an effective quality inspection process is one of the key components to success for your plant. There are many ways to create an effective process to ensure optimum plant performance and quality. Here are a few listed below.

Implement Mobile Devices

Manual quality inspections have provided great benefits to plants over the years, but no longer. The development of new, more advanced mobile technologies has given plants a more convenient and effective way to perform quality inspection processes.

By implementing mobile devices within your plant, the production process is streamlined and simplified to deliver greater workflow capabilities and increased support when needed. The devices will also be able to detect issues faster so you can resolve all problems at a timelier pace.

Most importantly, the use of mobile devices reduces the likelihood of human error because it provides consistency and better integrity in data collection. As a result, the plant experiences higher quality performance and overall lower cost-of-quality delivery.

Ensure Complete Solutions

Oftentimes, when an issue is detected within a plant’s system, only its symptoms are fixed. However, to ensure an effective quality inspection process, it’s important to address the root of the issue rather than just the symptoms.

To do this, plants must run more extensive tests to determine the source of the minor issues the system is facing. Once the major problem has been identified, it’s imperative that you fix it as soon as possible. Delaying the fix will only lead to more trouble and can even cause system failure.

Use a Preventative Maintenance Plan

Quality Inspection To better ensure quality in plant performance and production, it’s critical to have and follow a preventative maintenance plan. This makes sure that your systems get the proper services they need to keep them running smoothly.

Some of these services include routine adjustments, replacing worn parts, and performance tests. Each of these preventative maintenance procedures will help you to spot and repair problems quickly and keeps all systems running efficiently. Plus they’ll improve overall quality and minimize costs.

Keep the Customer in Mind

All plants want to make sure that the products they create are of the highest quality, even if that means paying additional costs. However, many tend to forget the customer and what they want in this situation. So plants pay extra to ensure quality products that consumers may not be interested in.

To avoid this, it’s important to understand a customer’s voice and opinions. Doing this will allow you to produce the quality product consumers want. Above all, this can minimize overall costs, as it prevents you from spending extra money on unnecessary enhancements.

Developing an effective quality inspection process for your plant will not only yield a better product, but it will also improve efficiency, costs, and overall plant performance. So be sure to follow the steps above to help you develop an effective quality inspection process.

CPV Manufacturing provides high-quality valves and fittings to help plants perform optimally and efficiently. To learn more about our valves, fittings, and other products, contact us today.