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JackatSDS

Plastic
Joined
Oct 25, 2019
Hey All,

Was wondering how you guys write out your travelers and if there are certain tools you use to streamline the process of making a travelers and if there are any tools you use to help write them. Trying to have our administrative assistant learn how to write travelers on her own and drop them off when we start making parts. Maybe there is a tool or software out there that helps identify what operations are what and the admin worker can copy past that in. Thanks
 
How detailed do you want to be?

Is this just for internal shop use, or are we talking about soup to nuts right
to a finished end product?

I worked in one shop where we were just a part of the process. Purchasing
bought material, and dealt with all the finishes and the packaging and all
that crap, so we had to deal with the internal stuff. Nobody ever looked
at them, nobody ever cared.

Part#.. PO#... Job#... Qty...

Process 1: Get material.
Process 2: Make parts
Process 3: Ship parts

Or at least that is what it devolved to once we realized that it was
shuffling paper to shuffle paper. I even had put a nice little box
at the top of my form to draw a quick and dirty isometric sketch so
it was easy to identify without having to remember part #s or job #s.

2 things I warn about.

1st.. Don't let an office girl dictate the processes need for manufacturing.
You will piss off everybody, and they will be mad at her, and its not her
fault. She doesn't have the experience or the knowledge to do that.. If you
want her to fill out the basics and leave the rest to the people that know,
that's fine, and the shop guys will appreciate not having to fill out redundant
crap.

2nd.. Make sure you aren't just making paper to make yourself feel important,
or in control.

We had one "ISO Idiot" that insisted travelers had to be so detailed that you
could make and inspect the complete part without the print. He also insisted
that anything hand written had to them be typed before it was filed. EVERYTHING.
Including inspection reports from QC. That turns a $100 quicky into a $1000
job real quick.

He was fired.
 
We use Job Boss for quoting, travelers, PO's, packlists, and invoicing.

For travelers I fill out a routing sheet with materials and tooling needed for the jobs as well as all the processes. Our admin enters it all in to spit out the quote. When the PO comes in for the work, she enters it and prints out a traveler with the job routings, tooling usage(ie. 1.2 1/2" flat em's), material all pulled from the quote. You can have it be as detailed as you want.

For jobs we have already done. She just copies over the last quote and I'll give her any updates that need to be made. It makes quoting pretty quick.

There's a lot to Job Boss so you can make it as detailed as you want it or scale it back. I don't know what we pay, but I don't think it's cheap. Since there's so much you can use it for.
 
Paperwork should make the job easier. If it just adds to the workload with no obvious benefits, it likely isn't what you need.

We use Fishbowl inventory software company-wide and use it for our travelers. Their main function for us is to record part numbers, quantities, dates, and all of that associated to a work-order number so the physical parts have something to trace them back to what's going on in the computer. There's a lot more utility to the software than what we currently use, but we're not "there" yet (see above).
 
If you're a job shop, I would just say that ideally, when you make a quote you should be able to turn it into a traveler "pretty darn easy". That is based on having a system where you can select a step/machine/tools/material to make the quote, save it, and when you get the PO from the customer you should be able to easily translate it into a work order.

If you're an OEM and have parts within "groups" (process is the same, just minor details are different) you can ease up by making a template based on the type of part for which you just modify based on the particular part details. This can also apply to job shops that have particular specialties (certain fittings, brackets, etc.).

The Dude
 








 
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