Category: Manufacturing

How do you know the status of tasks in production? For example: you’ve sent a work order off to CNC cut and want to know when it will be complete. Actually… has it even been started yet? Is the operator on a another job? Or on break? Will he get to it today? If so, when? And when will it be ready for burnishing and welding?

That’s why you use barcodes for task status. Scroll down below the video for a little discussion on barcoding on the shop floor.

Back to our CNC example above…

The CNC operator scan work order and task names to communicate his work status. That information goes into a “Work In Progress” system like Standard Time®. You can now see what job and task he’s on at any time. In fact everybody on the shop floor can see it. Just look up on the WIP big-screen and it’s right there.

Have you tried Standard Time? It really is a wonder. And a pleasure to use.

Find us on Google!  “standard time barcoding“

Use barcodes on the shop floor. They are a great way to update your mfg processes. Just a few barcodes on work orders will give you a wealth of new information. For instance, you can learn the status of every work order in the shop. Where it is now, who worked on it last, and the estimated completion. You’ll get all that just by scanning barcodes.

Download Standard Time® and give it a try.

Use barcodes to track time during manufacturing.

CNC operators track time with barcode on manufacturing jobs. Here’s how they do it:   (Watch the little video below, and then visit for more details)

1. They first scan a username to identify themselves
2. Then they scan a work order to tell the system which job they are on
3. Then scan a task or activity they are performing
4. A timer will start, and a new entry will appear in the WIP dashboard on the shop floor
5. The CNC operator performs the milling operation
6. When finished, they scan their username again
7. Then they scan STOP
8. The timer stops
9. Manufacturing managers now have a bunch of new information:

• start and stop timestamps
• employee who did the work
• work order and task status
• Work-in-progress status

All that information become valuable to the manufacturing process. And it’s all collected with barcodes. No keyboards. No fat fingers. No mistakes. Real data, collected in realtime.

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!