A project management blog for manufacturing and engineering
An important part of project management is to identify past due tasks so they can be dealt with. Past due tasks can be customer jobs you’ve agreed to deliver by a certain date or tasks that need to be finished before others can start. (scroll down for a video)
In any case, consider using the tool below to identify past due tasks. You can get a list of them and the total number of hours left to do.
The video below outlines some advantages of tracking time with barcode scanners in manufacturing. I won’t give away the secrets, so you’ll have to watch the video, but there are several good reasons why barcodes make sense on the shop floor.
The older ways of tracking time never really worked well. You got fake information that was so expensive to collect that it wasn’t worth it. But what if you could get real information with simple barcode scans. That might be interesting.
Watch the video and tell us what you think!
“Look into the crystal ball and I’ll tell your future”
Well, Standard Time® doesn’t exactly work that way, but close. Look into a manpower dashboard, and it tells your future… the future weeks of employee project commitments that is. In other words, whether your employees will drown in over-commitments or relax with little or nothing to do.
Ideally, somewhere in the middle would be nice.
But that’s what you get with the stand-alone resource allocation dashboards. They sit out on managers screens, updating periodically, and telling the future of project assignments and manpower requirements. They don’t get a lot of glory, but they perform a nice little service you’ll come to rely on, and perhaps a little more reliable than your average carnival palm reader. 🙂
Here’s a quick video to introduce you. Hope you like it!
How do you get fat-finger entries in your timesheets? By not using barcode scanners!
And fake entries. And useless information that consumes valuable human effort to obtain. That all comes from traditional keyboard and mouse, on traditional workstations with timesheet software. Or even on paper timesheets.
In fact, those paper timesheets are the worst. Employees fill them out on Friday, but can’t remember what they worked on yesterday. Why would you use them? Because your employees can figure them out pretty easily. Okay, that makes sense. But there are other ways to collect time on the shop floor.
It turns out, there’s a much faster way to collect employee time on the shop floor. With barcode scanners. Watch this video, then give it a try yourself.
Manufacturing engineers need to know the number of items produced on their assembly lines. They also will know the time spent by employees to produce those items.
So… how do you get that? (watch this video, then scroll down for more)
You get that information with barcodes.
You put a barcode scanner in the hands of every employee, put a tablet on the bench, and have them scan the quantity of items produced when they “clock in” on jobs. Now you have both the time they worked and the number of items produced on the shop floor.
You can now compute:
You also know:
Try this on the production line: scan your quantities for a month. Make one small change in the technique. Scan for another month and compare. Which production technique is most effective? Keep repeating this, each time looking at the average time per item. When that number goes down, you know you have landed upon an improvement worth keeping.
That is how you shave off 1% manufacturing time. And that is how 1% becomes 10% over time.
Standard Time® is how it is done on the shop floor.
“I can’t use a computer with a welder in my hands!” Does this sound familiar? Here’s a solution: Use barcodes to track time instead of asking your employees to enter time.
Scanning barcodes is a hundred times more accurate than typing hours into a computer or even entering them into paper timesheets.
Watch this short teaser, then scroll down and follow this line of reasoning.
Employees who attempt to enter hours on either paper or computer timesheets can make a lot of mistakes. First off, you can’t remember what you did earlier in the day, let alone earlier in the week. It sounds nice to collect hours on timesheets, but it just isn’t accurate. You’re getting fake data and you don’t even realize it.
Why not use barcode time tracking instead?
Scan barcodes when you start and stop jobs. The actual time will automatically be entered into employee timesheets. Every sliver of project time adds up. Employees don’t need to know how to use computers. There’s no mouse or keyboard. You simply scan to start, and scan to stop. What could be simpler than that? Now you’re getting real employee time, not fake time.
Download Standard Time® today!
What tool do you use to schedule jobs for assembly lines? A spreadsheet? Verbal communication with line managers? Or just big arguments centering around first-come-first-served job scheduling?
Most companies use a combination of all these.
But there is a tool. Watch this video, then scroll down below for a brief discussion and download link.
The tool described above is named Standard Time®. It slots jobs on assembly lines, and then takes input using barcode scanners. Now you can compare project estimates with actuals.
Projects are displayed on a Gantt chart. Each one can have unlimited tasks and subtasks assigned to workgroups or users. This lets you see manpower charts for headcount and scheduling charts for assembly lines. Both human and non-human resources are handled by ST.
You can give ST a try at the link below. It’s free to try, plus we’ll set up a GoToMeeting to walk you through the process.
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.
Ahh, vacation! Get away, enjoy; let our mfg software help run your shop.
When you use Standard Time® your shop runs like a sewing machine. Projects are slotted for production, operators are assigned, and actual hours collected on the shop floor with barcodes. Come back from vacation to find new work orders filled up with actual time and materials from the shop floor.
What a nice feeling. 🙂
How many employees do you need for your projects in the next six months? Or even the next month? You probably have a good idea already. It’s about the same as last month, right… because you have the same number of jobs as you always did.
Or do you? Are you sure?
If not, you may need a manpower capacity chart. That’s the topic of the video below. It’s free to watch, and might inspire you to change the way you compute future manpower needs.
Every month, your manpower needs change based on the projects and tasks assigned to employees. Slot more jobs, and employee staffing increases accordingly. Experience a slowdown, and manpower requirements decrease. There is a direct relationship between jobs and people. That’s well understood.
But what’s not so understood is how to shift jobs around to even out the workflow. You don’t want to over-allocate employees one month and then leave them sitting on the next. Best to shift jobs and tasks around until the workload is level. Or, as level as you can make it.
That’s where a chart like this has value. You can perform what-if scenarios until things normalize.
Have you tried the Resource Requirements chart? If not, give it a try!
Download here: www.stdtime.com/download.htm