A project management blog for manufacturing and engineering
Watch how we use these two Chromebooks to track manufacturing products with RFID tags. Just scan once and you get a timestamped record of the location of your job.
Consider using sticky-label RFID tags on all your boxes, inventory, products, and jobs so they can be tracked through the shop. You’ll know when, where, and who scanned.
Hey, nerds! Did you actually watch the Nerve Center Part 1 video?
You did? Seriously? Then you are a nerd.
You will love Part 2 below. It expands upon the nerdishly nerdish capabilities in Standard Time. You’ll need every last drop of this for your staff meetings and weekly tech-drops. Nobody will be more informed than you. Nobody will have more manufacturing job info than you. You are nerd king.
Tell us what you think!
Here’s an easy way to create new work orders in Standard Time®. The “Project Assistant” in this video steps through all the pages of a new project.
And did you know, once you have created a project, you can create a copy from it? Creating a duplicate of an existing project is even simpler. Just right-click on any project and choose Duplicate! Now you have a new work order that is ready to scan!
Watch this video for inspiration. 🙂
Help! I can’t get this barcode scanner to work!
Using a word processor and barcode font?
If so, this long and boring video may help. It applies to barcode labels you create in a word processor using a barcode font. You’ll discover some pitfalls to avoid when creating your own labels.
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.
There are a lot of new assembly line ideas coming into the Standard Time® manufacturing software product. Ideas from other manufacturers. Ideas on how to do things better. Give us a call, and we’ll share what we know. 🙂
Which kind of barcode scanner should I buy? Which scanners work with Standard Time? How do you connect a barcode scanner to a computer? Can you use barcode scanners with a Windows tablet?
All these questions are answered in the short video below. Scroll down below the video for more…
Turns out, any barcode scanner works with Standard Time. Just plug it in and begin scanning. Actually, barcode scanners work exactly like keyboards. They connect to USB ports like keyboards and send text like keyboards. That enables them to connect to Standard Time like a keyboard and can start and stop a timer, plus scan inventory, materials and expenses. All this is many times faster than keyboards, and much more reliable.
You can print barcode labels with any word processor or spreadsheet. Just choose a barcode font like IDAutomation. Include an * asterisk before and after every label, and you’re ready to scan.
For about $150 you have a simple barcode scanning station for manufacturing shop floor use. Scan time and materials into Standard Time.
When you’re managing projects, information display is everything. Here’s a quick tip to enhance your experience. (See video below.)
The video below shows how to arrange columns for best results during management. It talks about creating subviews of columns that apply to a particular need. These collections of columns help you see the exact information you need for any need, and let you quickly switch from one subview to another. In other words switch from one set of information to a completely different set with just a few clicks. Scroll below the video for more…
Let’s say you have one subview of columns for costs, another for graphical task display, and still another for task dates. Instead of cramming all that onto one view, why not chop it up into subviews. Then you can quickly switch between views to see relevant information.
Each subview is an arrangement of columns.
You arrange columns to make sense to you. And you create as many subviews as you need for all your project management needs.
Standard Time® is mostly a manufacturing project planning tool. It has some pretty rich displays and dashboards. These subviews are just part of the big picture. There are many other things like this to explore.
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.