Workshops
The factory as it physically is: its lines, and the shift teams that run them.
- Workshops
- Production teams
- Machines on the line
- A workshop is a physical line, not a chapter: routing steps run in one, machines are installed in one
- A line's capacity is the sum of its machines and is never typed in, so it cannot drift from the real plant
- Each shift team carries one letter, and that letter is printed on every batch it makes
- A batch can therefore say who made it, on which line, and on which day
Production Teams★
The shift teams, held on a right of their own.
- One letter per team, unique, and it never changes meaning: it is already printed on batches that left the factory
- The team of a batch is inherited from the order and corrected on the batch, because an order running over two shifts is not made by one team
Machines
The equipment and its capacity.
- Machine register with capacity, workshop and hourly cost
- Setup time counted as downtime, because a capacity that ignores changeovers is always optimistic
- Availability feeding the performance figures
- A live column saying which step is running on which machine right now
Machine Stops★
Declaring a stoppage on the floor, without the right to touch the machine record.
- Cause and duration recorded by whoever was there
- Separate right, because declaring a stop is not setting an hourly cost
Routings
How a product is made, step by step.
- Steps, workshops and expected durations
- Standard cost derived from the routing and the recipe
Recipes (BOM)★
The bill of materials, kept by production without any right over prices.
- Materials, packaging and conversions per finished product
- Edited from the product sheet, but on a right of its own
- A recipe left in draft has an invisible consequence, so the status is stated out loud
Production Orders
The order to produce, the shop floor running it, and the file it leaves behind.
- Production Orders
- Production order file
- Production dashboard
- Planning
- Machine load
- Performance (OEE)
- Material consumption at the real weighted average cost
- Before the order is launched, the screen says what is missing, item by item: needed, in stock, shortfall
- Launching without the material is possible, but never silent: it takes a separate right and a written sentence, because a hard block would be answered with a false goods receipt
- Closing an order whose issued material does not cover the recipe asks for a reason, because a batch made of nothing shows a hundred per cent margin
- An order fully declared, fully received and whose material tallies closes by itself; any order needing a human decision stays open
- Production costs allocated to the batch
- Manufacturing file: what went in, what came out, what it cost
- Cost variance against the standard
- Components the factory makes itself count in the price of what they go into, and a batch cannot be declared when the recipe called for one that never came out
- Material the run did not use goes back to the store: production declares it, the store receives it and decides, take it back or scrap it, and until it answers, nothing has moved
- A Consume button in front of every material of the recipe and of every store request: the workshop enters what the run really used, and what the store had not served leaves stock through that very gesture, in the name of the order and of the operator
- An order does not close without that declaration, and the production reports show what went beyond the recipe, in quantity and in cost
- The closing window lists every material, planned, requested, released and consumed: the rest goes back to the store in one click, or part of it is declared damaged with its reason, and the store confirms
- Cartons, jars and labels leave in whole units, rounded up on the whole order: twelve more jars never open a second carton, and a figure with decimals typed on a counted item is refused
- A right of its own: a workshop operator can consume without being able to suspend, plan or close an order
- A by-product or saleable waste lowers the cost of the product it came from, in the stock value as in the margin report, and not merely on a screen
- Planning, machine load, and OEE broken into its three factors rather than one opaque score
Quick Production
Launching, declaring and finishing a run from a single screen, on a tablet.
- Four gestures: choose the article and the quantity, launch, declare the batches and the waste, finish. A stopwatch runs throughout
- Before launching, the operator sees the material the recipe calls for against what is in stock, and, if given the right to see money, what the run will cost and what it is worth at sale
- Nothing is simplified behind the scenes: material leaves stock, batches enter stock, cost price, yield loss and accounting entries are those of an ordinary production order
- Waste lowers the cost of the batch, because batches only enter stock at the end, once the waste is known
- A module switched on factory by factory, needing an active recipe; a material shortage is refused unless a written override is given
Live Shop Floor
The wall screen of the workshop, on a right of its own so it can be shown without showing money.
- One tile per running order: the current step, its machine, the time elapsed and the time left
- TV mode: dark, very large type, no scrolling, pages rotating on their own, and the screen kept awake
- From a tablet on the bench, the team starts a step, declares a batch or closes an order, through the very same forms as the desk
- Buttons sized to be pressed with a glove, and a separate right so a wall display never exposes a cost price
- When there is nothing to count down, it says why instead of leaving a blank
Quality Control
The gate a batch does not pass without a decision, and the quantities that decision releases.
- Pending checks
- Blocking rejections
- History
- The control carries numbers, not just an opinion: presented, passed, reworkable, lost, and the sample the test used up
- Passed plus reworkable plus lost plus sample must equal presented. The software refuses to save a control that does not balance, and says by how much
- A sample is a normal part of making the product: its cost goes to the good units, as IAS 2 requires, while a unit lost for a defect is written off
- The store receives what quality released on that batch, never what production declared. Batch by batch, not order by order
- Setting aside fifty units out of four hundred is a normal shop-floor gesture, not an incident: it releases the other three hundred and fifty
- A rejection blocks reception until a manager records a waiver, named, dated and with its reason. Without a way out, a lock gets worked around outside the software
- A checkpoint ticked on a routing step is what makes the control mandatory. Before that rule, four hundred units entered stock with zero controls
Scraps
What was lost, valued at its real cost.
- Scrap recorded against its production order
- Loss valued at cost and posted to the books
Reprocessing
What can go back through the line instead of being thrown away, and it is two different things.
- Reprocessing
- Raw materials
- Finished goods
- Reprocessing file
- Damaged raw material: a case born from a scrap declaration, with the recovery rate expected and the one actually obtained, and the material re-entered into stock by the store
- Finished units the quality team set aside: they never entered stock, so nothing leaves it. They come back to their batch and face a new check
- Sent equals recovered plus lost. A run that saves nothing is legitimate, but it must say so rather than let units evaporate
- Material used by a rework run is charged to the original order: one cost object per batch produced, never a second home for the same cost
- The two kinds stay strictly apart in the data and meet only in the navigation, because whoever looks for their reworks should find all of them
Costs & valuation★
The right to see money inside the operational screens, held apart from the screens themselves.
- Stock value, order cost price, material prices inside a recipe
- Withdraw it and the same operator keeps working, simply without a single amount on screen