Has anyone fully barcoded the job entry data collection screen, from login to logout? We would like to not have the shop guys anywhere near a keyboard or mouse if possible. All suggestions welcome!
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We have ID badges with barcoded Epicor EmpID’s, routers with barcodes for job and op. Material pick list is also barcoded, along with bins and the material itself. Still, users are claiming qtys and making notes with a keyboard. I’m not sure you can entirely get away from data entry.
Do you have a specific question about this? Happy to help.
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We were looking to automate that part of the process so that users don’t need to enter qty’s. released qty - scrapped (if any) kind of thing… So people don’t need to worry about entering that… garbage in from typos etc, garbage out. Costing is a huge beast as I’m sure you are aware. We are just trying to minimize as many data entry errors as possible.
A post proc BPM on Labor.EndActivity that pre-pops the relevant fields might alleviate the issue. I already expressed doubt that you could eliminate this entirely, but you could certainly reduce the frequency of data entry from most/all clock outs to exceptions-only.
Assuming your floor is consistent enough to do this.
If you just have users punch in and out, then you can set your operations to backflush qty. This assumes no one is scrapping parts. There will always be some data entry needed at some point. For example, if you use backflush, you need some op that is manually entered to base the rest of the quantities off of. Normally the final op is like a QC op that says this many parts are complete. The end user will have to manually populate that quantity, but other backflushed quantities before that should get populated automatically after the last op gets documented with complete parts. Also if there is an outside subcontractor operation in the middle of your sequence, backflush cannot populate values for those ops. In these cases you have to have someone manually fill in the op before it goes out to a subcontractor. The value they fill in will backflush to the previous ops. If you have lots of SC ops, this quickly becomes an issue and backflushing loses some of its value.
I am curious to hear if anyone has a better solution to this, as we will likely also be working towards barcode entry rather than keyboard/mouse.
Due to the makeup of our jobs backflushing wouldn’t work for us… Has anyone created the BPM necessary to “Autofill” the qty complete? and the necessary fields for the calc? If so? I’d like to look at it. I could write a Progress query in minutes… But this ain’t quite the same. lol.
We are in the process of implementing Advanced MES for this purpose since it is connected directly to the equipment it will capture and convert an I/O signal to quantity produced. Then someone just has to interact with the screen to switch jobs and input scrap. The interface screen is clearer than the data collection screen is.
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I’m hoping to make this automated as well off sensors using advanced MES. But they seem to be more concerned with labor and burden.