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Work In Progress on the Shop Floor

Here’s a scenario that occurs every day in manufacturing job shops: A customer calls wanting to know the status of their job. You take the call but have only the slightest idea where their job is. Somebody scheduled it for production but you’re not sure when, and you’re not sure how far along it is. You don’t know the phase it’s in, so you can’t quite predict a completion date, which you know the customer is going to ask next.

Watch this little teaser video, then scroll down for more discussion.

What if you could look up on the big-screen on the shop floor wall and see the status. Or see it right on your PC. Wouldn’t that be cool?

But how would that work?

It works because employees on the shop floor are scanning tasks as they complete them. They scan the job and task, which tell you what stage the job is in at any given time. Dozens of jobs are in progress simultaneously, so this gives status to every one of them. What stage is it in? What percentage complete? How many hours have been completed so far? Which employee worked on it last? What department is it in? And what is the likely completion date?

This is “Work In Progress.” And it is available on a big TV screen on your shop floor. Now everybody knows the status of over job, from sales to project managers to supervisors to shop floor operators.

Work In Progress screens are available in Standard Time®. Download here: www.stdtime.com/manufacturing.

 

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Things You Collect with Barcode Scanners

Ever wonder what things you can scan during the manufacturing process? Here’s a quickie video for you. It’s not a tutorial on barcode scanning, just a survey of things you can scan. Scroll down below the video for a list.

 

Things you can scan on the shop floor:

  1. Employee names
  2. Project names
  3. Task names
  4. Categories
  5. Project status
  6. Task status and completion flag
  7. Expense templates
  8. Inventory items
  9. BOM lists
  10. Tools
  11. Unique items for your business
  12. Scripts

Got another thing you want to scan in your mfg shop? Have you tried the “Required Scans” option? That let’s you craft a custom scan to collect unique values for your manufacturing KPI’s and status. Scripts are another possibility to extend the built-in scanning capabilities of Standard Time. Just scan a script name and let it perform and database, email or web interaction you need. You will need IT support for script writing. They can be complex, but they are also very flexible and wide in their scope. You can do just about anything in scripts.

Click here to download: http://stdtime.com/download.htm

 

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Project Revenue From Gantt Chart

Did you know that your Gantt chart contains all the information for a revenue bar chart. You can look out into the future and see potential revenue for your projects. The video below describes one possible way.

You may be thinking of your Gantt chart as purely graphical, with dates and durations and user assignments. But behind those Gantt chart tasks is all the information for also viewing project revenue. And dragging tasks around on the Gantt chart is actually affecting your future cash flow. You are effectively telling your MRP/ERP when you’ll perform the tasks, which affects when client billing and cash flow occurs.

Watch the video and tell us what you think.

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Project Revenue From Work Orders

Manufacturers – know your future revenue with Standard Time® software. You already trust it for project planning and shop floor actuals. Why not get a little extra from it, like estimated project revenue of the coming months?

This is actually a really interesting idea! You have to plan manufacturing projects. You have tasks and employees tracking to them. You have work orders and WIP monitoring. That’s what manufacturing resource planners do. But while you’re at it, why not get a nice bar chart showing future project revenue?

Turns out, that project revenue bar chart is like a sales funnel. It can show revenue from projects that are won, lost, or in progress. Find out how much revenue you lost from certain sales techniques. Or won from other competing techniques. Find out how one project portfolio compares with another. See the revenue from each client, or all clients.

Got what you need? Print a copy for the sales meeting. What a nice little freebie from your manufacturing resource planner, Standard Time!

 

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Manufacturing Resource Requirements Software

Have you ever seen a Gantt chart with a resource requirements bar chart? In other words, a bar chart that updates as you drag task bars on the Gantt timeline. I know… that takes some time to mentally process. Watch the video below, and then scroll down from more discussion.

Image dragging task bars on your Gantt chart, and watching a resource requirements bar chart update as you do. That’s essentially what is being described here.

It’s one thing to see a nice timeline with task bars (that’s a Gantt chart), and it’s also one nice thing to see a bar chart with resource requirements for each week, but combining the two is really helpful. When you drag task bars on the timeline, you see what impact that had on resource requirements.

How many engineers do you need on week 34? How many forklifts in July verses August? How many assemblers on line 12 in November before the holiday rush? These are questions answered by a resource requirements chart.

Slotting projects on a timeline is also necessary. But you can’t do that without making sure you’ve got the manpower and materials. So, you need resource allocation. The two work hand-in-hand.

Standard Time® is a minimalist MRP with these exact capabilities. You can try these ideas for free. If you’re new to Gantt charts or resource allocation, this is the perfect place to learn. Click here: www.stdtime.com/manufacturing

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Organizing Manufacturing Projects

Question: How do you organize and report on manufacturing projects? That is to say, what criteria groups projects into working buckets? Do you put them into portfolios so you can see which portfolio performs best? Or set the status of projects to report on stages or phases? How about assign them to assembly lines to see slots where new projects can go? Those are all techniques described in the video below. Plus, there are a few more.

Did you know you can try these project organization techniques today? Download a copy of Standard Time® and try them for free. You might become inspired to learn more about your own projects and find that organizing them simplifies the monolithic list you have now.

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Manufacturing Resource Allocation

Use your “stuff” the best way possible in manufacturing. Haha, that’s one way to put it! This is just a quickie video to help introduce and explain resource allocation. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, this little video might help. And, it’s always worth hearing another perspective if you’re an “old salt” in the project management industry.

Manufacturing resource planners, like Standard Time® make light work of this kind of project management. And, they’re not bad at collecting actuals from the factory floor. E.g. actuals like time, materials, inventory usage, machine hours, and tool usage. Consider taking a look.

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Assembly Line Project Allocation and Scheduling

Assembly line managers can see which projects are running on each line. Use this lite MRP/ERP tool to slot projects on assembly lines. Once slotted, you’ll see their resource time commitments in a bar chart. Now you can find slots of new projects.

Watch the video below!

Every manufacturing project has resource and time commitments. Manufacturing projects on assembly lines are no different, except that you are committing those resources to a single line. That’s actually a good thing because you can now see which projects run on each line, and find empty time slots for the next project.

Bar charts help visualize time commitments, and make slotting new projects on manufacturing assembly lines much faster.

Have you tried Standard Time? Find the link on this page and download a copy. It’s free to try.

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Shop Floor Barcode Scanning

Manufacturers – let us familiarize you with barcodes. They have many advantages but let me mention three. Watch the video then scroll down for an overview.

The three biggest advantages of using barcodes on the shop floor are:

  1. Employees without computers can still collect their hours. Sure, a little tablet is still considered a computer, but you can throw away the keyboard and mouse. The only input device you need is a barcode scanner. That means employees are not fat-finger faking their hours. They scan their jobs and time is collected for them.
  2. You want accurate times for all your manufacturing tasks. How can you get them? It will never happen with a keyboard. There are too many ways to cheat and mess up.
  3. With just a few scans you collect a huge amount of data. Try that with a typical timekeeping software product. It won’t happen. Barcodes are the only way to grab all that data with so little employee effort.

Give barcode scanning a try. It may completely change your thinking.

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Scheduling Projects for Manufacturing

I’m a manufacturing project manager and I need to schedule jobs for production! Can I get them slotted quickly? How about tracking their time with barcodes on the shop floor.

Yep, there’s an app for that. (scroll down for a video)

It’s called Standard Time®. And it’s a registered trademark because it’s been around for nearly two decades. That’s a while. It means you have tools that have grown organically from many other customers. They have proven this app in so many settings you’re likely to find it slick as easy as they do.

Start by slotting jobs for production, and then take input from the shop floor with barcode scanners. You’ve got project management and time tracking seamlessly connected. Give it a try today!