Advantages of Shop Floor Control in Manufacturing | PlanetTogether

Managing manufacturing operations can be a challenging process in most industries. Many production managers struggle with the lack of visibility into the status of their production orders. Planning, scheduling, and monitoring activities are often performed manually and independently from one another. This lack of connectivity and visibility leads to production inefficiencies and increasing costs. 

Shop Floor Control (SFC) systems are used to track, schedule, and report on the progress of operations within a manufacturing facility. They allow manufacturers to have consistent up-to-minute visuals and analysis of their operations that can be accesses from their smartphone, email, or other form of digital device. 

SFC software also allows management and employees to have thorough insight into their operations as they can easily view what stages of production the projects are in, how well the production is flowing, and where issues are occurring. 

An important component of Shop Floor Control relates to the order progress information. This information is helpful to production managers as it allows them to have accurate real time data on the status of their production so they can work to improve its efficiency.

Manufacturing has become much simpler with the implementation of shop floor control tools as they allow manufacturers to take control of their supply chain and to come closer to reaching overall efficiency within their production. 

Shop Floor Control Advantages

Within shop floor control, there are a series of advantages that can further aid production planning and control:

• Up-To-Minute Information - Instead of having to wait and see how well production is flowing, shop floor control enables up-to-minute analysis. This allows you to have complete visibility within your supply chain and locate areas where improvements are needed. Using automated or semi-automated data collection tools will help provide production status information to the entire organization in real time. Workstation terminals can be set in place to allow workers to update the progress of activities as they are being completed. This information is then relayed to all departments so that everyone has access to the same information as soon as it is available. 
• Transparency  - As shop floor control offers data, project insight, and anything relevant to your supply chain, it enables your employees to all work toward the same goal. This is why accurate data and transparency is a must, because everyone must be on the same page to work toward the overall goal. In addition, shop floor control gives production managers transparency into what is happening on the shop floor and highlights the areas where efficiency can be improved. Production managers also have the ability to know when production orders will be completed and ensure that all orders can get to customers on time. 
• Cost Reduction - There are many ways in which shop floor control systems can lower costs. Older systems relied on manual entered data which required full-time employees managing spreadsheets and relaying the information to the right individuals. With shop floor control systems, the data can be collected automatically or maintained directly on the shop floor as orders are being processed. SFC is also able to locate areas where productivity is lacking which saves time for project managers to know where to focus their efforts. Identifying areas of low efficiency can help set improved processes which can further help reduce costs by eliminating waste, reducing lead time, inventory overhead costs, and avoiding shipment delays. 
• Support - Teams can solve problems together instead of separately. Shop floor control enables various departments to interact and communicate with each other, ultimately allowing them to pursue and fix issues collaboratively. Often, the people in charge of making decisions are the last to know when there are issues or problems occurring on the shop floor. When everyone has access to the same set of data, you don't lose time trying to get input from different departments. This solves issues much faster and saves the entire operation revenue and time.
• Process Improvement - One of the main benefits of shop floor control is that is can help identify production steps that are inefficient. These areas can be improved by providing additional training for your shop floor employees or setting new processes in place to reduce waste and lower costs. Process improvement can be difficult to maintain on the shop floor as employees tend to revert to their less efficient but familiar processes. Using shop floor control technology to track production status means that managers have real-time visibility into the production and can track whether processes are being followed.

Increasing the visibility into your production is essential for manufacturers looking to improve their production processes. Implementing an advanced planning and scheduling software with integrated production status reporting features such as PlanetTogether APS can help you take control of your production. PlanetTogether has helped numerous manufacturing facilities around the globe reduce their production costs and optimize their production. 

Instead of seeking and tracking down information, it is being 'radiated' to our team. Our guys can see if things are received on the line. We can click a button to see how many cases we've run, and then monitor that as it goes. PlanetTogether APS aligns us more.

BRIAN GOODWIN, MASTER SCHEDULER, NEW BELGIUM BREWING

Advanced Planning & Scheduling (APS) Software

Advanced Planning and Scheduling software have become a must for modern-day manufacturing operations as customer demand for increased product assortment, fast delivery, and downward cost pressures become prevalent. These systems help planners save time while providing greater agility in updating ever-changing priorities, production schedules, and inventory plans. APS Systems can be quickly integrated with an ERP/MRP software to fill the gaps where these systems lack planning and scheduling flexibility, accuracy, and efficiency.

With PlanetTogether APS you can:

• Create optimized schedules that balance production efficiency and delivery performance
• Maximize throughput on bottleneck resources to increase revenue
• Synchronize supply with demand to reduce inventories
• Provide company-wide visibility to resource capacity
• Enable scenario data-driven decision making

Turn Shop Floor Data into Real-Time Decisions

Shop floor control gives you the real-time visibility you’ve been missing—order status, bottlenecks, and actual progress instead of yesterday’s spreadsheets. But without the right planning and analytics tools, your team still spends too much time chasing updates and rebuilding reports instead of improving the schedule.

Download our one-page “Before & After: Free Up Your Day with APS” infographic to see how PlanetTogether APS transforms daily work on the shop floor—from manually collecting data and hunting for problems to using live analytics, alerts, and visual schedules to stay ahead of issues. Use it as a quick benchmark for where your shop floor is today—and what it could look like with integrated planning, scheduling, and analytics.

How APS Analytics Help You Monitor and Improve (Video)

 APS Resources