A project management blog for manufacturing and engineering
What does it take to update your shop for the 2020’s? (see video below for answer)
All you need are a few barcode labels and a scanner. $50 on Amazon. And Standard Time® manufacturing software. Give that a try before you bring in the robots.
Chromebook tablets and laptops work great as inexpensive barcode scanning stations. Deploy them anywhere on the shop floor, or even at each workbench. Just connect to the Standard Time® cloud by Wi-Fi and start scanning. This video shows how. It also shows how to speak as an alternative to scanning.
Send a link to your production manager!
Chasing the status of jobs and work orders on the shop floor? Well… you know… “there’s an app for that” as they used to say in the 2000’s. Or was that the 1990’s?
That app is Standard Time. It can chase jobs status for you.
ST has a “Work in Progress” WIP screen that shows the latest status of every job. Put a 60″ TV up on the wall, and everybody can see the latest job status.
This short video may act as inspiration to try it. 🙂
Even a fat-fingered welder can track time with barcodes. So there’s no excuse for missing work orders, unknown job status, or who-knows-where-that-job-went excuses. Just grab a barcode scanner and clock in!
To be fair, welders have some of the best hand-eye coordination of all human beings — fat-fingered or not. It’s the engineers that can’t tell their butts from a butt weld. So really, barcode time tracking is good for everyone!
One more for the road: Why do they only give welders ten minute breaks? Any longer and they’d have to retrain them. 🙂
Want an enterprise resource planner without paying a million dollars and then signing up for another million-dollar implementation schedule? It is possible.
Have you considered Standard Time?
This little video may inspire you to give it a try. We’ll even help you out, without the million dollars. 🙂
Turns out, you can scan a lot of things on the shop floor. But why? Well… to track work orders, employee hours, materials, inventory coming in and out, and a few other goodies.
In other words, automate the shop floor.
What’s WIP? Work In Progress. By scanning the items above, you get a nice dashboard of your work in progress, also known as WIP. You see the jobs in progress, and who’s working on them. Use that to predict completion times, communicate to sales, shipping, and clients.
As Bill Gates used to say, Information at your fingertips! Or… on the shop wall. 🙂
Your family and friends know your awesome. But show your coworkers you are!
Your employees can now tell you what their doing by simply scanning barcodes. That means you’ll have up-to-the-minute status of jobs, work orders, orders, and employees. Just scan and go in Standard Time®.
Here’s a fascinating idea! Set up a completely unmanned manufacturing shop. That’s right! Entirely automated, without employees, without human resources. Standard Time® can help when you’re ready.
Investing in CNC milling is a great investment for your manufacturing shop. But have you considered using Standard Time in connection with it?
What’s Standard Time?
It’s how you track jobs going through your shop. And how you track employee hours. And Work In Progress (WIP). Hopefully, the little video below will inspire you to try ST. Buy a barcode scanner, and use it to track work orders that travel through the shop. Let us know if we can help! 🙂