Accounting for Time in the Manufacturing Environment - Improving Productivity
“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.
Today, the manufacturer has many tools with which the use of company time can be monitored for inefficiencies—particularly, indirect labor costs. To help eliminate the wasteful use of time in the manufacturing environment, enterprise resource planning (ERP) software systems have been developed to track the employee clock day in terms of not only direct, productive labor, but indirect labor costs associated with non-productive activities. While these activities include specified off-the-clock break/lunch times, such events could also include indirect labor costs for legitimate on-the-clock meetings or training. In either case, this “missing time” for employees is distributed among all shop work and included in the budget as general indirect overhead cost.
Through the use of such time-monitoring tools as the user-friendly graphical user interface terminal (GUI) in the ERP software system, employees can easily and quickly log in when they entered the plant, and log onto jobs as they acquire them through the day. 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/ERP toolset is able to maintain an ongoing, real-time evaluation of productivity and plant work capability.
Ultimately, the accounting of time in the manufacturing environment means more awareness of the actual time it takes to complete a job when the waste is removed from the task. That is to say, time as a resource can be maximized through the reduction or elimination of indirect labor in the system. With this knowledge, the manufacturer can then chart the work order with greater confidence in meeting promised delivery dates. And, in an ever-increasing competitive global economy, meeting promised delivery dates can be all the edge that separates you from your competition.