Fact: If you don’t know how long it takes to manufacture your own products, you’ll be eaten.
Somebody is coming along to eat you.
Whether it is China or an upstart in your own country makes no difference. Technology is coming that will make your manual processes obsolete. That is, if you don’t improve your own first. Take a look around. Is your shop floor still largely human-powered? If so, you’re burning needless hours and keeping costs higher than they should be.
Why not try barcodes and RFID?
Scanning barcodes and RFID tag make time tracking quick and easy. Plus, it gives you new information you can use to improve. Do you know how long your products take to produce? How many employee hours are involved? Which processes are slow? Which ones are killing productivity?
Why not?
For a few bucks you can measure those things with a barcode scanner. Now you know. And now you can change. It’s really not that hard. 🙂
Here’s a video for inspiration.
Once you’ve watched it, go out to amazon and buy a cheap scanner. Then download “Standard Time” and try it out. Within a day, you’ll start seeing time records you can use to improve.
But yeah… start with the video below.