With ever-increasing movements in manufacturing toward a seamless integration of shop systems, enterprise resource planning (ERP) software has proven a viable solution to the problem of communication between departments.

The immediacy of graphically-displayed (GUI), real-time data available to operators at the touch of a finger functions to reduce the amount of time and paperwork necessary to make job production run smoothly.

However, one of the last vestiges of needless multilayer redundancy in the manufacturing system is shown in the very essence of the production system; that is, the conceptual and actual separations that exist in the engineering and manufacturing bills of material (BOM).

While there are, of course, different types of bills of material dependent upon the department that generates them and for their intended purpose, the similarities of ultimate purpose found in engineering and manufacturing BOM’s is the basis by which ERP seeks to their integration within the engineering/production process. (more…)

Getting the most out of what limited time a manufacturer has involves a strong sense of orderliness, as well as an awareness of the relationship of waste to productivity. This concept is especially true when considering the connection between the time an employee spends “on the clock”, and how much work he or she actually gets done during that time.

In the past, the problem of tracking employee time almost always involved the manual (paper-based) means by which such records were kept. However, today there is no better timekeeping tool for clocking on and off jobs than one in which the shop floor employee uses a Graphical User Interface (GUI).

Whether direct labor as value in actual production, or indirect labor cost through non-productive activities of employees, labor time is vital for the determination of the cost of goods sold (COGS). A virtual time and attendance workstation with a simple visual display, the user friendly GUI guides the shop floor employee when they input data associated with their ongoing job functions.

By monitoring employees, work centers, and/or machine production time in terms of being either on or off the clock, or at task on one or multiple jobs/work orders, the GUI is able to maintain an ongoing, real-time evaluation of productivity and plant work capability. (more…)

“Time waits for no one”, so the saying goes. As opposed to wood, cotton, water, or air, time is a non-renewable resource. On the shop floor, every tick of the clock means whatever has been produced (or not produced) is it—there’s no chance to go back in time to try and get more production out of the moment. It’s gone, finished, kaput.

In an ever-increasing competitive global economy, getting every bit of production out of each tick of the clock is vital to the survival of the manufacturer today. With the limited resource of time, accounting for its use is one way of ensuring that productivity is maximized during the production process. Not only will the accounting for all available time improve productivity in the long run, it will also aid in the all-important on-time delivery of finished goods. (more…)

After the age of the craftsmen, when the Industrial Revolution began to pump out products in mass, time became a critical issue with regards to production in manufacturing. No longer could products be made according to an arbitrary or infinite timeframe for production.

With the introduction of mass manufacturing, production mandates and quotas were increasingly created according to the notion of how much time it should take to make x number of items. The idea gave rise to business efficiency theories and models such as Frederick Taylor’s time-motion studies in the early 1900’s, and Frank Gilbreth’s one best way production mode of scientific management in the 1950’s.

The notion of standards- or estimate-based labor performance measurements has continued through the years in one form or fashion, and continues today in our new Twenty First Century industrial revolution. In short, performance measurement is a way to manage and benchmark performance in order to identify areas for continuous lean improvements.

However, what has changed over time has been the means by which labor performance data has been gathered, interpreted, and reported. Rather than just simply counting parts produced by any single worker in relation to the time they used to produce the lot, employee direct labor performance measurements are packaged with a variety of criteria including performance data such as competency scores, trending, goal progress, and several other factors to assess the actual labor utilized in production as a direct cost factored into pricing. (more…)

From the moment a purchase order is made by a customer, the clock starts ticking for the producer of the product they desire. For the customer, there is an expectation of delivery based upon criteria such as the importance of the need and a prior history of delivery time. On the other hand, for the manufacturer there is another expectation of delivery based upon completely different criteria such as the lead time given by the customer, materials inventory, and present/future work loads. Herein lies the friction that is often encountered between manufacturers and their clients when it comes to the concept of cycle time–the time it takes for a job to move from the sales order taken to a product shipped out the door. That is to say, in a world of shortened lead times and unforgiving expectations of on-time delivery and production perfection, how does a manufacturer reduce order-to-delivery cycle times while also maintaining quality? (more…)