In today’s business world, staying competitive means your company has to be both reliable and efficient. Whether you are delivering products or services to your customers, it is vital that you take advantage of all the available metrics to measure your performance. One of the best metrics you can use is mean time between failures, commonly known as MTBF. As to how your business can benefit from calculating your MTBF, here are some important points to remember.
Evaluate Individual and Team Performance
One of the most important benefits your business will gain by calculating MTBF is being able to have an in-depth evaluation of individual and team performance. Since the primary goal of calculating MTBF is to assess the reliability of equipment and products, you can use MTBF to evaluate the performance of those who are directly responsible for manufacturing your products. By identifying where improvements can be made, you can increase your product’s reliability.
Identify Failure Patterns
As you know, it is always best to identify and correct problems before they get out of control and begin to significantly impact your company’s bottom line. By using MTBF calculation, you can track and discover patterns of failure that may be occurring during the manufacturing process. Whether it is an equipment problem or issues with how workers are performing certain tasks, MTBF will help you find out what’s causing the failure.
Product and Equipment Values
When you track the MTBF of your company’s products and equipment, this will allow you to gain a greater understanding of the value associated with your products and equipment. Remember, a product or equipment’s purchase price is not the only cost you should focus on during the manufacturing process. By using MTBF, you can accurately assess how other costs such as repairs, replacements, and maintenance will help you decide if certain products and equipment are indeed worth buying.
Better Maintenance Schedules
If your company has had problems with equipment failures that have happened due to inconsistent maintenance, MTBF calculations will help you solve this frustrating and expensive problem. Once you implement an MTBF system, you can use the data to determine which time periods have the most equipment failures and other maintenance issues. After assessing the data from your MTBF calculation, you can then create a maintenance schedule that will address these problems and prevent future breakdowns.
If your business is not taking full advantage of this important metric, you are falling further and further behind your competitors. Once you understand and use MTBF calculations to your advantage, it won’t be long until you have the ability to make better decisions and increase your company’s profitability.
Lizzie Weakley is a freelance writer from Columbus, Ohio. In her free time, she enjoys the outdoors and walks in the park with her husky, Snowball.
