Category: Manufacturing

Employees on the shop floor now have task status while scanning barcodes, telling them how far long their tasks are, and when they are expected to end.

This is huge!                                                                 (scroll down the to the video below)

This small “percent gauge” acts as a motivator to help employees move forward and finish up tasks. Each time you start a timer with a project task, you see a percent complete indicator that informs you of the status of your tasks. When it approaches 100% you know it’s time to clean up and move on to the next task. Lingering past 100% is a no-no.

But how else would you know, without this indicator.

The basics of time tracking for manufacturing are time and materials. But did you know that you can collect more? This video shows how. Scroll down to watch.

You’re probably already collecting time for employees on the shop floor for manufacturing and assembly. You scan a username and project, and that starts the timer. So you’re getting the basics. That’s good. Of course you can also scan a project task or category to gather a little more information that can be reported on later. Everything you collect is intelligence.

But there is also a technique for collecting user-defined items. The video describes scanning a building name, an assembly line, a product line, and details about your product. These are details Standard Time could never imagine. But you can set up the software to require these special scans. Employees must scan your special requirements before the timer will start. That means you’re guaranteed to get them.

Think about all the special things you might like to collect, right where the work is done. Now give the software a try. You’ll get some awesome time tracking metrics you may have never thought possible.

If you’re barcoding both time and materials for manufacturing, take a look at this video.

You’re going to see how you can track both time and expenses with a barcode scanner. First you’ll scan the project and task to start the timer. Next, you can scan expense templates that represent the materials or supplies being consumed on the job.

Expense templates are used to represent all the fields you want per-populated in each expense record. They have a name you can scan. That names shows up in the timesheet, with the quantities next to it. Just scan once for each item being consumed. The quantity will update each time. Then look in the Expenses tab to see all the records you are accumulating.

Scroll down for the video.

Now that you have both time and expenses for the manufacturing process, you know exactly:

1. How much time you’re spending for each employee
2. How much time goes into each product
3. Where that time breaks down into tasks
4. How much each project costs
5. How much of that project is time
6. How much of that project is materials

Run your shop floor or any manufacturing with this inexpensive tablet from Wal-Mart and a barcode scanner from Amazon. (Scroll down for video)

For about $200 you can have a wireless barcode station on the shop floor. Scan every job, and you will know the follow information about your operation:

1. How much time each employee works on shop floor jobs
2. How much time each product takes to manufacture, assemble, and ship
3. How long each step of the process takes
4. How many jobs you did in a week, month, quarter, or year
5. Your average time per job
6. Your average completion time
7. Your worst job time
8. Your best job time

This is how you eek out percentage points in efficiency. You trim one small thing at a time. And you keep trimming until your operation is as efficient as possible.

Do you use project tasks in Standard Time® to track your manufacturing hours? Good, lot’s of people do. And do you scan those tasks to start a timer? Excellent, you’re in good company. Are you starting to wonder if there is a way to automate the process of creating project tasks from barcode labels?

Bingo!

Now you’re onto something. That’s the exact topic of this video. How to create project tasks directly from barcode labels that you’ve printed somewhere else.

Here’s the thing: you’ve got barcode labels you want to scan for manufacturing purposes. Those labels were pre-printed somewhere else. (You didn’t print them.) But you want project tasks in ST so you can track time to them. Your only solution is to manually type in each task. That’s okay, because you’re getting a lot of automation from the from the scanning once the tasks are created. But still, you’re wondering… could these tasks be automatically created?

They sure can!

Just scan barcode labels and the tasks are automatically created. Once created, you can scan the labels again (at different workstations) to start timers during manufacturing.

Watch the video and let us know your thoughts.