A project management blog for manufacturing and engineering
Here’s a wild idea: Affix barcodes or RFID tags to your robots. As they perform tasks, they will also scan values useful to manufacturing KPI’s. Use those values in advanced calculations that help define your business. Display those values on a dashboard so everyone can view them.
Did you know Standard Time® can do all those things?
Here’s a little video to help inspire you. Hope you like it!
This is the software shop managers and supervisors use to track work orders going through production. Hopefully, this little video will inspire you to try it.
Use barcode scanning for immediate job status. Here’s how it works:
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!