Wondering if any of you have any insights or suggestions on how to navigate this… or if, perhaps, we are missing something setup wise?!
We are currently implementing Kinetic MES into our factory.
Our basic set up is:
1 User ID for each Resource Group
Individual employees login
Where we are having a bit of difficulty is, in some specific areas of our factory, the same employee may simultaneously be working on more than one job.
E.g.
ResourceGroupA as User ID - logged in
Employee XYZ swipes on, and Starts Production for Job123.
Job is running, no issues
ResourceGroupB as User ID - logged in
Employee XYZ logs in here as well, and Starts Production for Job456
Because the work queue follows the employee, they also see Job123 on the list.
When everything is running as expected, no real issue, just have to be careful to Report Qty, End Activity against the correct job.
However, in this scenario:
Job123 is running fine
Job456 - the machine has hit an issue, so Employee XYZ initiates Downtime
Downtime is now listed against both jobs currently running for that employee. They cannot then Report Qty or End Activity against any of the other jobs running in other locations against their ID.
We are in the fairly early stages of our MES implementation, so would be grateful for any feedback or insights for any of you who might’ve hit the same issue!
Below is some info provided under “Adding Indirect Labor Codes”…
When the downtime button is selected in Data Collection (MES) the program suspends time to any job(s) the employee is currently clocked into and starts accruing time to the chosen downtime code. When whatever condition that caused the downtime is resolved, the employee ends downtime and time period again starts to accrue to the job(s).
Instead of using “downtime”, I think you would need to train your operators to End (Production) Activity against the target job as using Downtime (in your case, like you’ve seen) will impact all jobs they’re signed into.
Adding on to @dcamlin above, you might want to submit an Idea to see if Epicor would consider changing their design to make Downtime more flexible. You might find that lots of other folks would like the functionality as well, and there is strength in numbers!
There is an Idea submitted for this, currently only has 4 votes. We have run into the same issue and our manufacturing management currently accepts that if downtime’s reported when someone is running more than one job, the data won’t be fully accurate. But it’s usually close enough for our purposes. They would love having downtime be job-specific.