The incredible world of manufacturing has taken a big hit due to the Coronavirus. The lockdown has meant that workers your employees have been unable to come to work and fulfill their roles. And now, with social distancing becoming the norm for all businesses, how on earth will you maintain your capacity? Manufacturers of all kinds are worried about losing their ability to create products at such a high level as they were before the lockdown. Every business has a similar challenge, but in manufacturing you need to carry on working in some form, to maintain your skills. If your workers are away from their machines and workstations, they might lose their touch and their skills become blunt. But these following things could help prevent this.
Improve your tanks
In most manufacturing plants, there are water tanks of all kinds. These are used for cooling equipment, from drills, hydraulic hammers, air conditioning, and pipes. In order to maintain a good level of coolant or water inside the tank, use this type of electric float switch. This relays information to you, via a floating monitor. Every time the water or liquid you’re using, goes down or up, from being consumed by something, it will send a message to your systems. This allows you to know when you need to refill a water tank and not always rely on your managers having a keen eye to spot when the levels have gone below safe.
Training day
There’s no harm in bringing in your workforce to train on a weekend. The bottom line is, many companies will need to retrain or re-familiarize their workers with their roles. Having been out of work for many, many months, some employees may find they need a week or so to get back into the swing of things. This is very useful for you, because workers that are trying to get used to working with heavy machinery again, could make silly errors which result in serious injury. Therefore, avoiding lawsuits and just getting your workers back up to scratch is good for everyone involved. You should formulate a training day with your managers, to brush up on skills and test employees.
Improve your layout
Social distancing has become the norm and manufacturing companies will be worried about never being able to have full capacity again. However, your workers can come back in their full numbers, if you improve your layout. Using mezzanine floors you can have workers operating on different floors, above and below each other. This will also allow for more storage space so you can still have the materials and tools you need to function. You can also include 2-meter distance tape or markings on the floors so you can avoid any kind of viral spread. The layout of your production plant will need to be changed regardless, in order to meet new compliance laws.
Manufacturing is perhaps the toughest area to adapt to the new normal, but it’s not impossible. Focus on the layout changes to save space and bring your workers back in full number.