Question: Can you run a manufacturing shop on ST?
The answer is yes, but you’ll obviously need other software. ST is just for tracking employee and manufacturing time. Watch the video and scroll down for more. Here’s a second video on barcoding in manufacturing.
“Barcode scanners changed our manufacturing shop”
In other words, you’ll use this time tracking to learn how much time each product takes to build and and ship, and how much each employee contributes, and how long entire projects take. So this is just the time collection component of the manufacturing shop. Other software, which is not sold here, would run other parts of the shop. You’ll probably also use the employee timesheet for engineering and admin. That covers the assembly, packing and shipping, engineering, and admin functions of the organization. Scroll down to learn more.
Primary use #1 for manufacturing: barcoding unit labels
Start by printing out barcode labels for each employee, project, and unit. Scan these to start a timer. Each time segment represents time that somebody engaged with a unit on the shop floor. Run a report to see totals for employee time, project time, and time for each unit. Now you have the information to analyze units on the shop floor. It’s no longer a guess. You’re no longer saying, We’re pretty sure this product consumes most of our production resources.
“We were wrong, and had to change”
You may find that certain secondary products are consuming many of your resources. Somehow along the way priorities got set asided and resources were devoted to non-strategic endevours. This can happen when emergencies and panic temporarily change things. Or, somebody comes along and “fixes” something. Nobody remembers to realign operations back to strategic priorities, or to check to make sure the operation is running according to those priorities, and the changes stick. Problem is, they were never meant to be permanent, and no longer represent your plans.
Another thing that happens is that best guesses turn out to be incorrect. You set up a new process, or change an older process on your hopes and good experience, only to find that things didn’t work out as planned. But you don’t know that until you log the hours.
“The numbers don’t lie”
Those are the things you learn when testing with instrumentation. In other words, when you track your employee and unit time.
Primary use #2 for manufacturing: engineering time-sheets
Along with scanning, you’re likely to find use in the engineering shop, as an employee timesheet. This is totally different than the barcode scanning side of things. These are timesheets for projects and tasks — tracking design, development, and pre-manufacturing engineering. In fact, this may be your primary use, rather than barcoding, if you’re primarily an engineering shop with little on-premise assembly and shipping. Engineers love ST because it “thinks” the way they think. They don’t hate it the way they do other software you stick on their machines.
Secondary uses for manufacturing: PTO and vacation
As long as you have barcoding and timesheets working nicely, wouldn’t it be nice to have a PTO accrual and vacation tracking system? Sure it would! Here’s a video describing the time off accrual system. You’ll find that engineers and shop floor workers are not the only ones with time tracking needs. Ask your HR director if they could use PTO accruals.
“Yes! Because we’re doing that manually now”
Visit our manufacturing and engineering time sheets blog: http://www.stdtime.com/animated/animated-can-you-run-a-manufacturing-shop-on-st.htm
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