Benefits of Effective Shop Floor Planning and Control
Shop floor planning and management is one of the key factors to maintain a successful production line. Shop floor planning and control is a complete process involving different methods and tools to manage, track, plan, schedule and report the status of WIP (work-in-progress) on the production line. Once implemented into your manufacturing business, your managers and operators on the shop floor and the assembly line will get a seamless channel for quick communication.
Here’s what aspects you should consider to improve your shop floor planning and control and what benefits you can reap from it. The best in this regard is using manufacturing ERP supporting shop floor management.
Effective implementation of shop floor activity is vital for;
- Master production scheduling
- Controlling manufacturing priorities
- Minimizing WIP on job floor
- Managing finished goods inventory
Workflow of shop floor planning and control:
Shop floor control involves the precise management and monitoring of your manufacturing operations, equipment, inventory and job floor workers.
The phases of shop floor control include manufacturing order release, scheduling and progress.
Manufacturing order release is the crucial element of the master production plan that tells the shop floor personnel which manufacturing order should be generated. The shop floor management module of an ERP system will help create a sequence of orders to be generated. Accordingly, the manufacturing processes and resource capacity will be planned for timely completion of work orders.
Manufacturing order scheduling encompasses a comprehensive workflow and scheduling of the production order. It provides you with the complete manufacturing routing and workflow the production order should pass through. This phase wholly depends on the type and quantity of materials required to complete the order, and the workstations it has to pass through. In this way shop floor managers and operators will get to know what needs to be done for order fulfilment, how it will be done and who will do it.
Manufacturing order progress as the name implies monitors how manufacturing orders are progressing and other production operations on the shop floor. This phase provides a complete overview of work-in-progress, orders in the waiting queue, and finished orders. It gives you all information about the individual orders taking place on the production and employees working on the floor and what work they are doing.
Knowing the complete workflow of the shop floor, it will be easy for you to understand the benefits of shop floor planning and control.
Let’s take a look.
Shop floor management not only provides you insights into how your automated manufacturing processes are going, but also gives you more visibility and control over job floor, operators and production lines.
- Data accuracy:
Using the best ERP software with a shop floor management component will give you real-time and accurate information about the shop floor operations and performance. With immediate updates, you can better understand the order progress passing through the production lines. You can also easily identify production bottlenecks and take appropriate measures to overcome them.
- Reduced overhead:
Lean manufacturing practices coupled with shop floor control help you identify the production areas that are prone to bottlenecks and require improvements. Improved manufacturing efficiency will reduce manufacturing lead time, production cost, and thereby increase your sales and profit margins.
- Capacity planning:
Resource capacity planning is another benefit of shop control software because it gives the entire overview of the manufacturing process and hence makes it easy for you to allocate the resources (including manpower and equipment) and handle the production line efficiently. It also helps in workflow automation to perform the tasks quicker through efficient development and execution of a master production schedule.
- KPIs (key performance indicators):
Shop floor control is equally important like your fully skilled production team for successful completion of production run. You can have quick and reliable communication back to your employees on performance levels. Using shop floor applications, knowing the KPIs status, you can provide more training for underperforming team members, boosting productivity.
- Production bottlenecks become transparent:
Shop floor management boards make production line problems and variations more transparent and give the floor managers and line operations a clear overview of related information. In this way, everyone on the shop floor can work more effectively toward a shared goal.
- Quick resolution of floor issues:
Shop floor planning and control help everyone in the business to communicate with each other promptly and efficiently that allows the quick solving of the floor issues. Quick detection and solution of the problems help keep production going seamlessly. With your shop floor data easily accessible from one place, you don’t have to waste time in explaining issues and giving feedback to other concerned departments while addressing the problems.
- Maintain quality control:
Shop floor management software helps operators to measure and report material waste and identify whether or not batch failures are recoverable. With this software solution, you can easily trace batch failures, material waste and can separate the repairable production batch failures from the main inventory.
- Fairly Priced Products:
You can price your products with the help of improved analytics and accurate reporting you get from shop floor management software. With all the information from operators working hours (break times, downtime and overtimes) to manufacturing costs, production lead time estimations and workstation capacity, you can better understand the number of products you can produce and their market value.
Last but not the least is the perk of paperless manufacturing because customers today are quite well-informed and want to purchase products from the businesses who ensure eco-friendly manufacturing.
Wrap Up:
Shop floor planning and control is crucial to successful manufacturing business. It not only helps in quick communication between the floor managers and operators, but also helps in data accuracy, overhead cost reduction, capacity planning and solving the floor issues and a lot more.
ERP solutions like MIE Trak Pro with a shop floor management module allows the manufacturers to achieve a paperless production workflow. Moreover, the shop floor scheduling will give you total visibility, real-time reports and accurate analytics for improved production planning and enhanced efficiency along the production line.
