Some background before we begin
The ability to understand your costs, manage your capacity, and accurately quote all depend on knowing what your labor costs are for each work order. Infor VISUAL customers typically use the labor barcoding functionality, or the brand-new Shop Floor Mobile solution to capture labor on their work orders. (If you would like to learn more about Shop Floor Mobile, click here to view a demo of each module.)
How manufacturers measure their performance varies from company to company. We often see companies using manufacturing metrics or KPIs that are not necessarily what they need, but rather what they know can be measured (and trusted). That is a big difference. When the critical determinants for collecting data are largely based on technical infrastructure, discipline, and existing processes, that data might not be exactly what you’re looking for.
Machine data is feedback that comes directly from the operational resource on the production floor. It is true, real-time data of run rates and cycle times that can provide exceptionally valuable information for companies where managing capacity is critical and actual costs need to be accurate.
I used to be a plant manager, an operations manager, and a supervisor. I understand the importance of on-time delivery. If a company I worked for wasn’t tracking it, I started to. Anyone who reported to me also knew the importance of on-time delivery.
A WBS is a framework that defines the deliverable or outcomes of a project. The WBS is a hierarchical view of what can be considered 100 percent of the scope of desired deliverables—all desired results—of the project.
This guide will walk you through how to determine your current licensing for VISUAL Shop Floor Mobile Licensing and possible licensing based on desired modules.
VISUAL Shop Floor Mobile (SFM) is a solution that provides mobile functionality in the areas of Labor, Attendance, Materials, and Scheduling from a web application that allows you to deploy it on mobile devices such as scanners, tablets, and mobile phones. It takes the existing VISUAL functionality in these areas, and gives them a technology overhaul which provides a variety of benefits. Better yet, there is a licensing option that gets you UNLIMITED licenses. These exciting new developments allow you to become more efficient by putting the solution in the hands of more users. The technology uplift allows more cost-effective hardware options, and provides a streamlined, modernized user experience.
There are many software systems available to help companies execute various functions. For example, our team at Visual South works with many businesses that use QuickBooks and Excel to handle day-to-day operations. However, we often find that these companies—along with similar businesses running legacy systems—are looking for a better way to manage all their processes, especially if they have some form of manufacturing or production requirements.
For a discrete manufacturer, work orders are the lifeblood of production. The work order authorizes the development of a product—it provides the production team with a method to create the product to meet the specifications for the demand it is fulfilling.
It’s a universal truth that every manufacturing company schedules. You may not do it well, but you do it. It’s simply the nature of the business—customers request an item and you must look into the future to predict (and commit) to when it will be done…before you even start working on it.
