Category: Advice

It is a known fact that cavemen do not use barcode time tracking software. They have good dredlock hair but no manufacturing metrics. They have superb cave drawings but no real KPI’s to speak of. Honestly, it’s just not their thing.

Cavemen pick lice from their coworkers hair; that is how they count and measure time.

“I picked 238 lice today”

“Ha! 372 lice, here!”

“Counting lice works. It’s the way we’ve always done it.”

You can’t really argue with that logic. It works, and that’s that. It is what it is. Barcoding work orders is not even a remote possibility with cavemen. They don’t think in terms of employee hours, work order status, and continual improvement. They don’t even have a WIP screen on their cave walls. And if they did, what would it say? “796 lice this week”? It would definitely not show all the jobs in progress on the shop floor, and predict ship dates. Nope. Lice picks is all. Okay, cool. Carry on…

 

Everyone needs comfort.. even machinists and welders. Why not give them barcode scanning software to eliminate the drudgery of reporting their daily time. That’s “comfort food” for the soul.

Here’s the deal… your machinist hates the stupid timesheet he’s forced to fill out every Friday afternoon. Plus, he doesn’t really remember what he did all that week. After all, he’s slept at least once since Monday. So you’re getting fake and false data anyway.

But what can barcodes do to help?

A lot. Scan jobs at the time you do them, and you are reporting your time as you go. When Friday afternoon arrives, you’ve already sent in fifty small time segments telling exactly what you did. That’s guaranteed to be fifty times more accurate than the paper timesheet everybody hates.

 

 

“My manufacturing employees work hard. But I really don’t know what they are doing! How can I find out?”

What a great question!

Consider using the “Employee Status” window on a big screen. It’s resizable and configurable enough for a 75″ big screen. Hang a big TV on the shop floor and display current status of every employee. That tells everyone what everyone else is working on. Or, if that information is secret, you can view it yourself in your own office. But again, consider hosting it on a separate monitor where you see status all the time.

And… as it turns out, there a similar screen for job status. As with the employee status screen, you can resize the job status window and set the font for viewing at a distance. You could also hang a big TV out on the shop floor just for job status.

So with the “employee status” and “job status” windows, you get two views of the same information. One is from an employee perspective. The other is from a job perspective.

 

Fact: If you don’t know how long it takes to manufacture your own products, you’ll be eaten.

Somebody is coming along to eat you.

Whether it is China or an upstart in your own country makes no difference. Technology is coming that will make your manual processes obsolete. That is, if you don’t improve your own first. Take a look around. Is your shop floor still largely human-powered? If so, you’re burning needless hours and keeping costs higher than they should be.

Why not try barcodes and RFID?

Scanning barcodes and RFID tag make time tracking quick and easy. Plus, it gives you new information you can use to improve. Do you know how long your products take to produce? How many employee hours are involved? Which processes are slow? Which ones are killing productivity?

Why not?

For a few bucks you can measure those things with a barcode scanner. Now you know. And now you can change. It’s really not that hard.  🙂

Here’s a video for inspiration.

Once you’ve watched it, go out to amazon and buy a cheap scanner. Then download “Standard Time” and try it out. Within a day, you’ll start seeing time records you can use to improve.

But yeah… start with the video below.

Some smart guy said, If you can measure it, you can improve it. So if that’s true, you should be able to measure the amount of time employees spend on the shop floor, and improve it, true?

scroll down for the video

In other words, just by knowing how long things take in your manufacturing process could lead to clues and ideas about how to shorten them. But how do you know how long things take? You could ask each employee to write them down. Then another employee could type in that information. Then another employee could compile the data into reports.

Or, you could use a barcode scanner.

You may be surprised to find small areas you could trim. And then you could measure your time again. And trim again. Until you trimmed one percent from your manufacturing time.

One percent? That’s peanuts! That won’t help us!

True. One percent is small. But do that ten times, and you have ten percent. Do I have your attention now?

That’s the whole point of this video. It asks you to shoot for one percent… and hopes you’ll end up at ten or twenty. It’s all about continuous improvement. Continuous measurement. Continuous time savings. Sure, that may mean new investments in manufacturing automation, but in the long run, time is money. You will save money if you save time. That is a virtual guarantee.

Grab a barcode scanner and give this a try.