Perfecting your shop floor scheduling is essential otherwise you’re going to have:
Inefficient production lines;
Inefficient supply chains; and
Dissatisfied customers.
In this article, we’re going to look into the 10 ways you can easily improve your shop floor scheduling:
#1 – Knowing When to Start Production;
#2 – Shop Floor Variability;
#3 – Raw Material Inventory Management;
#4 – Demand Planning;
#5 – Eliminating Spreadsheets;
#6 – Simplifying Your Quoting Process;
#7 – Capacity-Loading Scheduling;
#8 – Theory of Constraints;
#9 – Getting Set-Up with Real-Time Tracking; and
#10 – Using an ERP System.
But firstly:
What is the Shop Floor?
The shop floor in manufacturing is a part of the factory or space where people work with tools and machinery (which can be automated) to manufacture goods.
Your shop floor also includes your inventory and storage.
Your shop floor management includes strategies and systems to:
Rank;
Track; and
Report production orders and schedules.
When thinking about what is shop floor, you can think of it as the area where the magic happens.
Anything related to the physical manufacturing of your product is a part of the shop floor.
Without a proper shop floor schedule in place, it’s going to be difficult to bring together all these different elements.
What is Shop Floor Scheduling?
Shop floor scheduling is taking everything related to manufacturing, that’s including the:
To effectively control these activities, a manufacturer needs to understand the infrastructure of their business, and have a clear understanding of how their shop floor operates.
Without this, they won’t be able to properly develop their schedule.
So, here are 10 tips that will help you improve your shop floor scheduling.
Pro tip:
You’ll only be able to keep on top of your scheduling if you have perfected your shop floor planning.
1. Knowing When to Start Production
Woah, wait? You can improve scheduling by scheduling?
Scheduling production is one thing, but knowing when to begin production is another.
It might seem logical to begin production as soon as manufacturing orders are generated (and most cloud-based manufacturing software schedules production this way).
However, you run the risk of overburdening your work-in-progress (WIP) manufacturing by sending MOs to a workstation too soon.
To avoid this issue, you need to develop a plan or take advantage of shop floor scheduling software that can provide you with flexibility.
Focusing on this allows you to efficiently prioritize orders instead of completing them one-by-one.
2. Shop Floor Variability
In manufacturing, you can have your shop floor planning down to a tee. But, there’s still a lot of opportunities for issues to arise which will affect production, such as:
Late deliveries of raw material;
Employees unable to come in and finish a job; or
An important order comes through and puts all other projects on hold.
Problems are going to inevitably arise, and your shop floor scheduling needs to anticipate these problems, and adjust your production accordingly, so you can continue making your products.
3. Raw Material Inventory Management
To follow your shop floor scheduling, you’re going to need raw material and components ready to complete MOs.
But that doesn’t mean stocking inventory just in case a load of orders come in, because that’s going to take up valuable storage space and drive up your carrying costs.
Another way to improve your shop floor scheduling and even your inventory management is to do some demand planning.
Demand planning will allow you to make an educated prediction on future demand by looking into:
Seasonality sales;
Your competitions sales; and
Your historical sales
Your demand planning is going to help you better plan your shop floor scheduling by anticipating future orders.
5. Eliminating Spreadsheets
Maybe, in the beginning, managing your business via Excel or Google Sheets was fine. But, as your business expands, sales increase and your manufacturing processes become more complex – spreadsheets will eventually become a burden.
Spreadsheets are inefficient because they require constant manual updates, and one mistake can lead to you making business decisions with information that’s incorrect.
Unless you upgrade your business to shop floor scheduling software, you’re going to find problems with spreadsheet management such as:
Pouring human resources into keeping them updated;
Playing catch-up from simple human error;
Having trouble capturing data on your production; and
Slowing down your business’s growth.
Pro tip:
Once you’ve mastered shop floor production, you’re still going to need to deliver on these deadlines. Be sure to look for tools that can help you get your production management under control, so you don’t lag behind on orders.
Before the advent of shop floor scheduling software, there was an approach to scheduling manufacturing, developed in the 1980s, called the theory of constraints (TOC).
The idea behind TOC is that the performance of your production line, all depends on the performance of underlying constraints.
It’s a form of lean manufacturing that helps you identify weak points (be that internally or externally to your shop floor) and address those issues to improve your production workflow.
9. Getting Set-up with Real-Time Tracking
The only true way to understand what’s happening on your shop floor is to get a system that can provide you with an overview of production in real-time.
With shop floor scheduling software that has real-time tracking, you can monitor and make business decisions there and then, on:
Inventory;
Production progress; and
Employees status.
Getting this information quickly and updated constantly means you can easily:
You can implement the majority of points listed above manually. But, to effortlessly implement these points, manage your business, and optimize production, you’re going to need to get set up with an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.
A shop floor scheduling software like an ERP is going to give you:
Total visibility;
Improved reporting and planning; and
Improved efficiency.
ERP systems help you increase your shop floor scheduling by allowing you to break down complex processes, avoid data re-entry, and give you the tools to improve everything else from production to delivery.
The Benefits of Improving Shop Floor Scheduling
Optimizing your shop floor scheduling is going to help you and your employees:
Stay focused on the most important tasks;
Stock the optimal level of inventory; and
Have a centralized point of communication in the business, between your shop floor workers and other departments.
But the other benefits you can expect to enjoy from working on your shop floor planning is:
Improved efficiency;
Enhanced capacity planning;
A better understanding of your due dates;
Focused priorities;
Increased revenue;
Reduced WIP inventory;
Reduced set-up time; and
Monitoring the progress of production.
But that begs the question, which is the best shop floor scheduling software for the job?
Katana Shop Floor Scheduling Software
Katana Smart Manufacturing Software is a shop floor scheduling software, not only designed to improve your shop floor but built to help you get more control over:
Your entire business from the shop floor to the backend.
Katana supports your shop floor scheduling with tools to help you:
Prioritize Orders
Our nifty drag-and-drop feature allows you to easily reprioritize work orders, so you can focus on the orders that require more resources and keep your production running smoothly.
Manage Tasks
Assign tasks to your workers and use the dashboard to track their progress or reassign tasks. While your workers can:
Receive tasks;
Start tasks;
Pause tasks; and
Complete tasks.
Gather Analytics and Reporting
With Katana you can gather data so you can:
Give better price estimations;
Have better lead-time estimations;
Improve shop floor workers efficiency; and
Lower your labor costs.
And there we have it! Everything you need to know to improve your shop floor scheduling.
However, the quickest and most efficient way to improve your scheduling is to implement shop floor scheduling software.
Want to see Katana in action? Request a demo and see for yourself how it can optimize your shop floor scheduling.
If you have any questions, we’re ready and waiting to answer them down below or over on our social media channels.
And until next time, happy manufacturing.
Katana Cloud Inventory
Katana Team
Katana’s cloud inventory platform covers the live inventory, production, accounting, and reporting features that give businesses the knowledge they need to make the right decisions.
