The goal of this blog is to provide tips and ideas for improving time tracking and project managment for our customers and other interested people.
Here's a quick way to get actual employee hours on the shop floor: use a cheap tablet with a barcode scanner. Scan jobs, tasks, and materials. Now you know exactly what jobs are in progress, and what materials are being used. See more at https://www.stdtime.com/barcode.htm
Get task status on the shop floor by scanning barcodes. In fact, just look up on the big screen for a Work In Progress display. The last task status is display in WIP. Employees start and stop timers, record task and project status, and record materials used -- all from barcodes.
Hi everyone, Ray White from Mfg Projects I’m here to introduce you to barcode time tracking on the manufacturing floor. There are a lot of advantages to tracking time right on the shop floor with barcode scanners. Consider these three to start:
1. First, you’ve got work orders or manufacturing projects, but how do you get actual work hours from employees that don’t use computers? Or don’t sit in front of a workstation? The answer is, with barcode scanners. That’s advantage number one, and it’s a big one.
2. Number two; barcode scans are the most accurate way to track projects. No more fat finger, mouse, clicking, fake time entries, trying to remember what you did last Tuesday, or last week. You just scan… bleep, bleep, bleep, and a timer starts. Bleep, bleep again, and it stops. That’s real data; nothing fake about that.
3. Number three; you collect a lot of extra information in just a few scans. The work order, the client, the employee, department, task, phase, status, kind of work, percent complete, not to mention actual start and stop times. This is a river of data coming off the shop floor.
That was just three. There are others you’ll see in these videos.
So, if you want to track actuals on the shop floor verses estimates, barcode scanners are the way to go.
Hey, I’m Ray White.
Good luck on your manufacturing projects!
Every manufacturing project has tasks, or steps, phases, or activities that define the work you'll perform. And some of those tasks are dependent upon others. In other words, you can’t start one step until another is completed. Or, there may be phases later in the process that won’t start until previous phases are finished.
Those are called task dependencies. Tasks are linked, and their dates depend on previous tasks.
In this video, we’ll look at four types of task dependencies that model actual conditions on the shop floor.
Let’s take a look!
Here on Standard Time® we’ll look at four distinct types of link relationships that you can see by the lines and the arrows in the Gantt chart. The first one we’ll look at is finish-to-start, which is the most common; then start-to-start, then finish-to-finish and finally we’ll take a look at start-to-finish.
Let’s go ahead and look at the most common link relationship which would be the finish-to-start. The starting date of a successor task is linked back to the finish date of another. When this task ends another can start. That’s the most common. We’ll move this task and you can see the next task updates because this one has been moved. Finish date on this one changed so that changes the starting date of the successor task.
The next type would be start-to-start. You can see the starting date of this task is linked back to the starting date of another. When that one is moved then the successor is also moved because the two start dates are linked together.
The third type would be finish-to-finish, where the finish date of this task is linked back to the finish date of another. We move that, the two finish dates are linked together and when the predecessor moves then the successor would also be updated.
The fourth type would be start-to-finish, where the starting date of this task goes down to the finish date of another. When we move this task then the successor also moves because the starting date is linked back to the finish date.
The examples you see down below are variations of we already looked at. We’ve got start-to-start; when the starting date of this task changes then the starting date of a successor task would change. We’ve also looked at the finish-to-finish; so when the finish date of this one changes then the finish date of the successor would also change. So you can combine these to form a nice little link relationship.
The long lines you see on these milestones are lag times. If we click on this link icon in the link column; we can go ahead and look at the lag times that you see connected with these link relationships. I should point out that the inbound tasks that you see here, actually none here, are predecessors and the outbound tasks are the successors. They are linked together with certain link relationships. In this case they have some lag times. I’ll click here, you can see the finish-to-start link relationship; which we already looked at. And a lag time of two calendar days. Close that and look at this one.
We have start-to-start, which we’ve also looked at previously with minus-four calendar days. Cancel out of these and that explains the long lines that you see here linked to these milestones. That covers the four distinct types of link relationships in Standard Time that you can use for your projects.
Hello manufacturing managers! Do you ever have trouble scheduling jobs for production? • You have to get them slotted quickly • But you also have to find available resources • And you can’t overload them with too many jobs. That’s a challenge! Have you tried Standard Time? With Standard Time, a Resource Requirements chart updates as you drag projects in your Gantt chart. Now you instantly see the impact on labor and materials. Like the idea? Download today! www.stdtime.com/manufacturing
If your manufacturing shop has assembly lines, you might like to see which projects are running on each line. Turns out, there’s a tool for that. It’s called Standard Time, and it answers a lot of similar questions like:
1. Which assembly line has a free slot for my next project?
2. Which lines are booked?
3.What is the utilization rate of each assembly line?
4. Which assembly line is my project running on?
5. And others
Let’s have a look at project resource allocation in Standard Time, and specifically how that relates to work orders… or projects… running on assembly lines.
Here we go!
We’ll start by choosing tools, assembly lines here in Standard Time®. This will give you a list of assembly lines in your operation; you can click the + symbol to add new ones and then set the properties on those assembly lines. I won’t go into the properties here; that’s not the focus of this video; we’ll be talking about project resource allocation on assembly lines. You probably would want to right click on an assembly line and choose assign projects.
You’ll notice that you can have multiple projects assigned to a single assembly line. Normally those projects would execute sequentially, so when one project ends the next would start. That would allow you to see the task and project allocation to assembly lines and spot gaps or slots where you can put new projects.
You may also use the project tasks tab and Gantt chart to see a timeline of those tasks into the future. Then choose view, Project, Resource Allocation. You’ll notice I’m looking at all projects here, I’m going to click this last option. And then choose an assembly line from the drop down. Here you can see all the projects that are allocated to this assembly line. Pick another one and you see the allocation for that assembly line.
You may also notice the Gantt chart is still visible behind this resource allocation window. I can grab tasks and projects and drag them and see the effect that it has on that assembly line. You can spot the slots where new projects could be added and use this as a tool to slot new projects for your assembly lines.
Close tolerances and tight sales margins? Keep track of work orders using barcodes. CNC operators use barcodes to track manufacturing time on the shop floor. Here's the process:
1. Scan username
2. Scan work order
3. Scan task
4. Timer starts
5. Perform job and task
6. Scan username again
7. Scan STOP
8. Timer stops
Now you have just recorded the employee, work order, task, client, start, stop, actual work, and about ten other pieces of relevant data. Use that in reports, WIP, and KPI's.
What really is Project Resource Allocation? And why do manufacturing managers care about it? In essence, it’s just looking into the future and making sure: • You’re using project resources the best possible way •And that nobody is over-allocated • And nobody is under-allocated Nice! But is there a tool for that? Sure, it’s called Standard Time® It’s a project management and manufacturing tool for your shop floor. Download a copy from www.stdtime.com/manufacturing
