At the core of every production facility, the shop floor is the bustling hub where raw materials become finished products. Here, operators, supervisors, and schedulers and planners fill distinct roles in the interplay between machinery, processes, and skilled workers. To ensure a safe and successful production run, precision and efficiency must be central focuses.
Given the variables and complexities facing shop floor workers, achieving operational efficiency can be an enormous challenge without the proper tools. They require instant access to critical information to ensure smooth workflows, maintain product standards, and keep to exacting timetables.
In this second article of our six-part series looking at the efficiency solutions that Trak-Suite, the exclusive suite of applications and services designed to work with Infor Syteline ERP, brings to various roles in manufacturing. In this article, we explore the impact Trak-Suite has on the productivity, standards, and safety of shop floor workers, and how cutting-edge elements like Beacon-Trak and Shop-Trak function in concert with Trak-Suite’s core functionalities.
Trak-Suite is a comprehensive solution designed to elevate manufacturing operations by seamlessly integrating into the daily operations of a manufacturing facility, serving as the central hub for data and communication. It provides real-time, role-based information tailored to different personnel across the shop floor, addressing the unique challenges faced by each role, allowing that each individual has access to the information they need, when they need it. By streamlining communication, ensuring adherence to safety guidelines, and enhancing overall efficiency, Trak-Suite is the key to orchestrating a manufacturing environment where precision and safety coexist.
Machine operators are the frontline of any production facility and play a pivotal role in translating plans into tangible products. Tasked with operating machinery and executing manufacturing processes, they are the driving force behind transforming raw materials into finished goods. These workers are the backbone of production, diligently following specifications, adhering to timetables set by planners and managers, and ensuring the seamless execution of manufacturing tasks.
Challenges: In the dynamic environment of the shop floor, machine operators face the ongoing challenge of aligning continuously changing priorities with variability in product-specific requirements, while meeting tight deadlines without compromising quality. Maintaining production efficiency among these variables requires precision. Operators sift through packets of information to make on-the-fly decisions that impact the fit, form, and function of every product they work on, across the entire production process.
Solutions: By providing only essential details tailored to their tasks, Trak-Suite eliminates the need for operators to actively sift through data. This not only simplifies machine-specific functions but also ensures a cohesive and efficient production process. With real-time updates aligned with planners' schedules, Trak-Suite empowers machine operators to navigate challenges with precision, efficiency, and confidence.
Supervisors on the production floor bear the crucial responsibility of hands-on management to support the smooth and safe functioning of personnel and machinery to maintain the quality of the product and the wellbeing of the workers under them. They are actively engaged in monitoring and appraising individual employees, so their constant presence and adherence to quality, maximum utilization and efficiency of company resource standards are indispensable to operational success.
Challenges: For supervisors, the production floor is awash in a vast amount of data. From job details and individual worker assignments to current piece counts, scrap counts, drawings, specifications, and work instructions, supervisors grapple with the challenge of rapidly sorting through this information on a constant basis. Among their many critical tasks, it is nearly impossible to monitor the status of the planned production schedule and swiftly assess whether the job is running ahead or behind, making adjustments in personnel, materials, and other key aspects of production where needed.
Solutions: Trak-Suite is the key for supervisors in organizing and processing this massive amount of data. By equipping them with the relevant real-time data, Trak-Suite provides supervisors with up-to-the-minute updates, giving them a comprehensive overview of production and enabling better decision-making and a smoother production run. They can proactively address deviations from the plan, guaranteeing that production aligns seamlessly with predetermined schedules.
Production planners and schedulers serve as the architects of efficiency within a manufacturing operation, responsible for creating detailed workflows throughout the production process. Planners align production strategies with customer demand and organizational goals, while schedulers engage in critical decision-making to determine when each task should commence and conclude, factoring in resource availability, constraints, and dependencies to streamline the workflow and facilitate timely product delivery.
Challenges: The roles of production planning and scheduling are filled with complexities. From creating efficient workflows and planning for material procurement to allocating resources and collaborating with supervisors and managers throughout production, schedulers face the daunting task of keeping all the various elements of production coordinated. They must find the balance between machine availability, labor capacity, and material availability to achieve efficiency and maintain a synchronized workflow.
Solutions: Trak-Suite acts as a collaborative platform, allowing schedulers and planners to maintain dynamic communication lines with other roles to stay informed about current schedules, equipment availability, timetables, and material requirements. This real-time visibility fosters collaboration across different facets of production, enhancing overall efficiency and contributing to the successful orchestration of the manufacturing process.
Shop-Trak is a world-class Manufacturing Execution System (MES) integrated into the Trak-Suite ecosystem, designed to optimize operations, reduce errors, and enhance overall productivity. Shop-Trak allows individual users to customize their personal user interface (UI) within Trak-Suite.
Upon logging in, Shop-Trak automatically adjusts the screen, eliminating unnecessary options, screens, fields, or capabilities. This user-centric design minimizes noise, providing a cleaner, more intuitive, and personalized experience for every worker. This facilitates easier onboarding and training, better acceptance, higher data accuracy, and improved reporting. By providing shop floor workers a tailored experience, Trak-Suite removes extraneous data, allowing workers greater focus on production with far less time searching for information relevant to their roles. Shop-Trak also streamlines efficiency in crucial downstream areas like customer service, job costing, inventory accuracy, accounting, planning and scheduling, along with resource allocation.
As an integral component of the Trak-Suite ecosystem, Beacon-Trak utilizes small Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons to offer real-time, role-based information to key personnel across the production floor. Depending on where they are on the shop floor, Beacon-Trak pushes relevant, personalized, role-specific data to workers’ tablets, devices, and terminal points.
Supervisors and machine operators benefit from instantaneous insights into ongoing tasks, worker involvement, piece counts, and production trends, facilitating proactive issue resolution and minimizing disruptions. Quality control technicians receive timely updates on quality-related metrics, including scrap data and reasons for scrap, ensuring swift responses to maintain the integrity of the manufacturing process.
For planners and schedulers, Beacon-Trak provides a comprehensive view at any given production point. This capability lets them resequence work as needed, with real-time updates reflecting on the Visual Dispatch for shop floor workers. The result is a more agile and responsive production scheduling process that aligns with dynamic priorities.
Shop floor workers face a number of challenges in maintaining precision and efficiency. Trak-Suite addresses these challenges with tailored solutions for each role. Real-time dataflows, personalized UI, and seamless collaboration enable informed decision-making, proactive issue resolution, and enhanced safety and efficiency in the production process. Adding powerful, feature-rich solutions like Shop-Trak and Beacon-Trak within the Trak-Suite ecosystem promotes an agile and responsive shop floor, where issues are swiftly addressed, disruptions minimized, and production aligns seamlessly with dynamic priorities.
In the next installment in our series highlighting Trak-Suite’s capabilities to maximize manufacturing efficiency, we’ll look at how customer service workers can use this powerful set of tools to nurture customer and vendor relationships, iterate on processes, and deliver orders smoothly and on-time.
If you’re ready to experience the transformative power of Trak-Suite, contact us for a free demo and witness firsthand how efficiency meets innovation on the manufacturing floor.