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Workflow management system - for employees

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Aluminum
Joined
Oct 4, 2013
Location
Ballard, WA
As my business is growing, and employees are hiring in I'm finding myself overhwelmed keeping track of projects, and keeping the guys busy. Primarily we do millwright work, but in support of those activites we have a machine shop and fab shop. I'm not yet big enough to justify hiring a foreman. I've got all the jobs listed in Quickbooks and in a cloud folder, but I want to put something together that everyone in the shop has access too without the financial data. Although I know of a shop that's 100% transparent in that aspect as well, I'm not there yet :)

Many if not most of the shops I pass through the forman manages the jobs, and keeps people busy. The employees don't typically know what their job for the day will be until the forman gives them the drawing. Pretty old school.

I've seen a system where all of the active jobs are posted on a board or screen that every employee has access to. A description of work, the drawing, some instructions and contact information. If it's a fab or machining job the material will already be ordered, and its arrival date listed. The jobs are all pinned up on a tack board in the shop. The guys can look over the jobs and get a feel for what's on the table. They can see if we have the tooling we need, and if I've overlooked anything. Short of a pending deadline, they can tackle any job they want if they need something to do. We would still talk about what needs to be done for the day, but it's nice to see the whole picture.

I'm thinking a system like the latter would be good for what we do. I don't want to have to come up with a task list everyday, and I like the idea of more transparency. I'd also like to post shop tasks such as fixing broken equipment, sharpening drills, picking up supplies etc. Whatever needs to be done around the shop with a "general facilities" title rather than a job name and number title (paying jobs).

What sort of workflow system do you use?
 
WOW! Sounds like a "every man for himself" environment. Sorry, I don't have anything useful to contribute .... Maybe a shared excel sheet, short 5 minute meeting in the morning, and everyone having access to the excel sheet to "check off" completed jobs? ... :confused: Each person picks a task, completes, then sees what is left??
 
I have something like this used an excell spread sheet hooked the lap top up to a 50" tv on the wall. works pretty good .
 
You’re right, your comment isn’t useful.

People who are out for themselves, and throw their coworkers under the bus aren’t welcome in my shop.

It’s certainly not a cutthroat every man for himself environment. Quite the opposite. We work as a team, share knowledge, and play to each other‘s strengths. It’s in that spirit that I want to create a visible workflow where everyone can participate in the process of moving jobs through the shop.

I started and own the business. And there’s nothing on the board that I wouldn’t do myself. I work in the shop or in the field every day, 15 hours a day. It’s hard to be everywhere at once, so I’m trying to implement systems that will make everybody’s job easier and more efficient.
 
I've observed several shops get to this point. The start-up stress slowly morphs into the stress of success! In other words the very work you hoped and prayed for in the first few years suddenly is overwhelming.
Here is how we handled it at the shop I started out in: We had two main product lines with dedicated employees for each product, and painter/final assembly guy. (I went from only employee to up to 7 of us so fairly small) Should have been quite easy to track work right? Also used Quickbooks for invoicing, etc. For the first several years, orders were entered in QB for the invoice and then literally penciled into one of those old green ledger books for the work list! The shop guys would come in, look at the list and then go build it. Problem here: Customer would call back to add an option and it would get entered on the invoice but not in the ledger book. Employee had no idea and when customer would come to pick up said product, lo and behold, missing an option. When I became responsible while one owner was gone for a time I couldn't stand that stress. Scrapped the Ledger Book (I'm a millennial!) it was full anyway and started printing out the invoice from QB as a "packing slip" (has the option right in print menu without changing a thing) so it would not show prices and this became a traveler for the job. When painter was finished it was returned to office so we knew it was done. Still need a simple list for quick reference, even this I set up some custom reports in QB that showed sales orders. Whether this works depends on how you do sales orders/invoices. To keep a separate list is always a challenge as it means entering data twice but Quickbooks doesn't track work very well. We usually had some sort of separate list as well with Customer name and product mainly to attempt scheduling but was a challenge to keep up to date.
So anyway I did as much as possible right in QB since all the info was there anyway. Upgraded to Premier so we could have the function of Sales Orders. That let me track orders and as soon as it was done turned it into an invoice.
We really liked Outlook Calendar and Tasks for simple work list as we used outlook for email anyway.
Now I'm back in start up phase of my own shop hoping and praying for enough to survive. Hoping I can get past this into the fun stuff above sometime!
 
We use ShopVOX. We didn’t need full erp but wanted job tracking. This is a good fit for us and also syncs with QB Online
 
Depends on the guys but my fellow employees seemed to appreciate the work laid out clearly and drawing/documentation provided. One shop I worked at in the mean time was somewhat vague on who should do what and when. Very little communication on whose job to order the parts. Employees had to be very self motivated. In my opinion, the owner/manager/foreman should take care of lining it all up so the shop guys can be productive, if an employee is expected to go to the office and order the 5 bolts that are missing that kills productivity. What about the jobs on the board that no one wants to do? I agree with a once a day meeting to go over what's on the schedule and make sure everyone is clear on what needs done. When I was managing the work, I found I was often doing the little stuff that a beginner could have done, however I knew exactly which of those things was needed and when so all the other guys could keep on production. And it worked well to do those things between phone/office time etc.
 
As my business is growing, and employees are hiring in I'm finding myself overhwelmed keeping track of projects, and keeping the guys busy. Primarily we do millwright work, but in support of those activites we have a machine shop and fab shop. I'm not yet big enough to justify hiring a foreman. I've got all the jobs listed in Quickbooks and in a cloud folder, but I want to put something together that everyone in the shop has access too without the financial data. Although I know of a shop that's 100% transparent in that aspect as well, I'm not there yet :)

Many if not most of the shops I pass through the forman manages the jobs, and keeps people busy. The employees don't typically know what their job for the day will be until the forman gives them the drawing. Pretty old school.

I've seen a system where all of the active jobs are posted on a board or screen that every employee has access to. A description of work, the drawing, some instructions and contact information. If it's a fab or machining job the material will already be ordered, and its arrival date listed. The jobs are all pinned up on a tack board in the shop. The guys can look over the jobs and get a feel for what's on the table. They can see if we have the tooling we need, and if I've overlooked anything. Short of a pending deadline, they can tackle any job they want if they need something to do. We would still talk about what needs to be done for the day, but it's nice to see the whole picture.

I'm thinking a system like the latter would be good for what we do. I don't want to have to come up with a task list everyday, and I like the idea of more transparency. I'd also like to post shop tasks such as fixing broken equipment, sharpening drills, picking up supplies etc. Whatever needs to be done around the shop with a "general facilities" title rather than a job name and number title (paying jobs).

What sort of workflow system do you use?

I work for a shop experiencing severe growing pains. Our leadtimes are 12-16 weeks and growing. We made the decision to retool with better equipment, and have only finally gotten management down.

What happened is that the owner of the shop got too busy with phone calls, emails, and general running a business stuff, and was out in the shop less and less. Without anyone managing things, orders got missed, parts were made incorrectly, and it was all a mess. We have since organized all incoming orders onto a google doc spreadsheet. Everyone uses and makes notes on it, but one computer savvy person is responsible for keeping it clean. We still pull invoices prior to shipping anything out, but we have it all automatically calculated who needs what on the sheet so we can make the appropriate size batch to cover everyone, rather than fulfilling orders individually. We also committed to upping our inventory numbers of welded parts (and writing that number down so everyone knows when we are low) and making batches of parts /before/ we need them.

Since I put these changes in place I ended becoming manager. (Of 3 people). I just try to give everyone enough information to do their job. One guy likes everything laid out for him in a step by step. Another likes a big list of orders with dates he can look through and fulfill as he sees fit. Another one just likes looking at what we are low on and building those. For this reason one on one meetings seem more productive, as it's easier to gauge understanding and fit. Keep in mind, we are a small outfit.

In any case, we have priorities, but everyone also has "background tasks" they can work on whenever, such as a certain part we can never have enough of. There are also scheduled tasks, such as weekly inventory sheets that get filled out for any parts we outsource with considerable leadtime.

And for gods sake if someone asks for supplies, supply them. Clipboards have stopped papers from flying everywhere, whiteboards have kept our welding, fastener, and packing suppliers informed, and tools/racks have saved a lot of time. I've literally gone out there and thrown sharpies in the general direction of where they get used because it's cheaper to scatter a bunch around than to constantly lecture people to keep track of them.

Also, keep a licked backup of certain critical supplies, such as taps, sanding disks, etc that seem to run out without anyone noticing and then nobody can build anything.

All that being said, we are a plate/sheet metal shop making our own semi-custom products, so this may not be the approach for you. Also, this gives a fair amount of leeway to employees, so you best have ones that don't need to be watched to be productive. (though it is easier to count at the end of the day what someone did).
 
I've literally gone out there and thrown sharpies in the general direction of where they get used because it's cheaper to scatter a bunch around than to constantly lecture people to keep track of them

This works surprisingly well, Ive also done it with Dykem and Arkansas stones.

As for the OP, if your small enough to let everyone dictate their own work thats great, but i would have go the route of assigning jobs to people on whatever schedule makes since.

What happens when you have a bunch of tough shitty jobs on your board and no one wants to do them?
Or you have your most experienced guy picking the easy work and the new guy left with the more difficult?
Who gets to pick first?

too many variables for me
 
As my business is growing, and employees are hiring in I'm finding myself overhwelmed keeping track of projects, and keeping the guys busy. Primarily we do millwright work, but in support of those activites we have a machine shop and fab shop. I'm not yet big enough to justify hiring a foreman. I've got all the jobs listed in Quickbooks and in a cloud folder, but I want to put something together that everyone in the shop has access too without the financial data. Although I know of a shop that's 100% transparent in that aspect as well, I'm not there yet :)

Many if not most of the shops I pass through the forman manages the jobs, and keeps people busy. The employees don't typically know what their job for the day will be until the forman gives them the drawing. Pretty old school.

I've seen a system where all of the active jobs are posted on a board or screen that every employee has access to. A description of work, the drawing, some instructions and contact information. If it's a fab or machining job the material will already be ordered, and its arrival date listed. The jobs are all pinned up on a tack board in the shop. The guys can look over the jobs and get a feel for what's on the table. They can see if we have the tooling we need, and if I've overlooked anything. Short of a pending deadline, they can tackle any job they want if they need something to do. We would still talk about what needs to be done for the day, but it's nice to see the whole picture.

I'm thinking a system like the latter would be good for what we do. I don't want to have to come up with a task list everyday, and I like the idea of more transparency. I'd also like to post shop tasks such as fixing broken equipment, sharpening drills, picking up supplies etc. Whatever needs to be done around the shop with a "general facilities" title rather than a job name and number title (paying jobs).

What sort of workflow system do you use?

WOW! Sounds like a "every man for himself" environment. Sorry, I don't have anything useful to contribute .... Maybe a shared excel sheet, short 5 minute meeting in the morning, and everyone having access to the excel sheet to "check off" completed jobs? ... :confused: Each person picks a task, completes, then sees what is left??

You’re right, your comment isn’t useful.

People who are out for themselves, and throw their coworkers under the bus aren’t welcome in my shop.

It’s certainly not a cutthroat every man for himself environment. Quite the opposite. We work as a team, share knowledge, and play to each other‘s strengths. It’s in that spirit that I want to create a visible workflow where everyone can participate in the process of moving jobs through the shop.

I started and own the business. And there’s nothing on the board that I wouldn’t do myself. I work in the shop or in the field every day, 15 hours a day. It’s hard to be everywhere at once, so I’m trying to implement systems that will make everybody’s job easier and more efficient.

My comment is as useful as your opening post with partial information. :rolleyes5: As an aside I did mention "Maybe a shared excel sheet, short 5 minute meeting in the morning, and everyone having access to the excel sheet to "check off" completed jobs? .." But hey,lets ignore that part of my post.
 
I have started looking into Microsoft SharePoint for a document and workflow management solution. Not for the actual production orders itself but for recording production issues and continuous improvement etc. You can create templates for creating items in lists, assign them to different people or machines, change status and attach as much documentation as required.
 
I have something like this used an excell spread sheet hooked the lap top up to a 50" tv on the wall. works pretty good .

I've seen this in some production shops. Not sure it has enough space for the entire description of work, but I like the idea thanks.

I've observed several shops get to this point. The start-up stress slowly morphs into the stress of success! In other words the very work you hoped and prayed for in the first few years suddenly is overwhelming.
Here is how we handled it at the shop I started out in: We had two main product lines with dedicated employees for each product, and painter/final assembly guy.
Now I'm back in start up phase of my own shop hoping and praying for enough to survive. Hoping I can get past this into the fun stuff above sometime!

I'm actually bidding on some dedicated products for this very reason. Ease of management! I'd love to train somebody to handle a task, and to do it repeatedly. Some guys really like doing repetitive tasks, while others prefer new challenges. Just have to find ther right fit. Good luck with your new shop!

We use ShopVOX. We didn’t need full erp but wanted job tracking. This is a good fit for us and also syncs with QB Online

I'll look into it thanks!

What about the jobs on the board that no one wants to do?

We still have standing meetings to discuss the day's tasks, and I do delegate jobs like this to guys who I know are capable. Normally I do the tough jobs myself, but I'll put someone else on it if there is enough lead time so they can learn.

What happened is that the owner of the shop got too busy with phone calls, emails, and general running a business stuff, and was out in the shop less and less. Without anyone managing things, orders got missed, parts were made incorrectly, and it was all a mess. We have since organized all incoming orders onto a google doc spreadsheet. Everyone uses and makes notes on it, but one computer savvy person is responsible for keeping it clean. We still pull invoices prior to shipping anything out, but we have it all automatically calculated who needs what on the sheet so we can make the appropriate size batch to cover everyone, rather than fulfilling orders individually. We also committed to upping our inventory numbers of welded parts (and writing that number down so everyone knows when we are low) and making batches of parts /before/ we need them.

And for gods sake if someone asks for supplies, supply them. Clipboards have stopped papers from flying everywhere, whiteboards have kept our welding, fastener, and packing suppliers informed, and tools/racks have saved a lot of time. I've literally gone out there and thrown sharpies in the general direction of where they get used because it's cheaper to scatter a bunch around than to constantly lecture people to keep track of them.

Also, keep a licked backup of certain critical supplies, such as taps, sanding disks, etc that seem to run out without anyone noticing and then nobody can build anything.
.

Story of my life right now. I get up at 7am, and leave the shop at 10pm every day. I could use more help, but mostly more efficiency!

I like the google doc spreadsheet idea. But I do have some older employees who can barely use cell phones :) The paper travelers will have to do for now, and they are necessary for carrying prints and such anyways. As millwrights we mainly do field work, so the traveler for many jobs is just the customer info and brief description of the issue. The guys just have to figure it out when they get there, and pick up the supplies they need.

For sure on the shop supplies. I outfit the vans and shop with everything (within reason) we need. If it can make use money I'll buy it. I keep abrasives in the boxes with the tops cut off so when they run low, they bring me the box and I can reorder.

This works surprisingly well, Ive also done it with Dykem and Arkansas stones.

As for the OP, if your small enough to let everyone dictate their own work thats great, but i would have go the route of assigning jobs to people on whatever schedule makes since.

What happens when you have a bunch of tough shitty jobs on your board and no one wants to do them?
Or you have your most experienced guy picking the easy work and the new guy left with the more difficult?
Who gets to pick first?

too many variables for me

In the moring standup meeting, everyone get's an assignment (or more) from me based on what needs to be done and the schedule. Actually I have one guy that starts at 4am because he's crazy, so for hime I type up a note the night before. Since my original post I've made a board with all the job travelers posted, including sort of 'general facilities' tasks. Once your assignment is done, now they can grab another paid job first, or some 'general facilities' tasks depending on the time they have left in thier shift. So far this has already reduced the amount of phone calls I'm getting thoughout the day. I'm a millwright too :)

Thanks for all the suggestions everyone!
 
Story of my life right now. I get up at 7am, and leave the shop at 10pm every day. I could use more help, but mostly more efficiency!

I like the google doc spreadsheet idea. But I do have some older employees who can barely use cell phones :) The paper travelers will have to do for now, and they are necessary for carrying prints and such anyways. As millwrights we mainly do field work, so the traveler for many jobs is just the customer info and brief description of the issue. The guys just have to figure it out when they get there, and pick up the supplies they need.

For sure on the shop supplies. I outfit the vans and shop with everything (within reason) we need. If it can make use money I'll buy it. I keep abrasives in the boxes with the tops cut off so when they run low, they bring me the box and I can reorder.


The guy's in the shop here don't know even know how to open the spreadsheet. They have a computer in the shop that one computer literate person makes sure is on with the spreadsheet open.

I have so far been able to teach guys how to type in a box, and to press control+f to find a name. They can do nothing else. Hence why one person is in charge of cleaning up the spreadsheet every week.
 
What happens when you have a bunch of tough shitty jobs on your board and no one wants to do them?
Or you have your most experienced guy picking the easy work and the new guy left with the more difficult?
Who gets to pick first?

If experience is a concern, simply write who is approved to do tasks on the board. Where I work we get raises according to skill, so we are naturally incentivized to take on the hard jobs. If the new guy takes on a tough job, we train him and if he does well he gets a raise the old guy won't.

For this to work you have to actually give raises, not just promise them. Most practical for a shop that's drowning in work.
 
So I see a lot of mention of shop guys not able to use a PC or spreadsheet. Why would you be okay with that? It means your employees are obsolete just like that old Bridgeport that was holding you back. So you should be training them or replacing as needed, or you just won’t move forward.
 
So I see a lot of mention of shop guys not able to use a PC or spreadsheet. Why would you be okay with that? It means your employees are obsolete just like that old Bridgeport that was holding you back. So you should be training them or replacing as needed, or you just won’t move forward.

This particular employee's job is to weld. He reliably makes good welds in good time. I'm not going to replace him over something so minor, and I doubt I could even find a computer savvy individual willing to do nothing but weld all day. And if I did, I would hire him on as an additional welder, not a replacement.
 
We are a six person company making our own product and currently use a web based organisation software called clickup.

For repeating jobs you can create templates that assign jobs to the responsible people(s) and assign dates, priorities, time. Its quick to setup, and works ok so long as everyone uses it and someone takes ownership of keeping it up to date. We haven't quite worked out how to estimate when jobs will finish from this. Also, a fair amount of our work is customized or configured, so you need to tweak the tasks in the template. We also print out the packing slip from our ERP system (which is pretty basic) as a job traveller and also discus assigned jobs first thing in the morning. You can see all types of organisational views, use it off a phone. Its pretty fast to use, so you can use it to make checklists for every different task required (think ordering different types of parts or assembling systems).

You can also use clickup to organise development tasks that you want to remember for later. I like this feature the best, but then that is what I spend my days working on.

I hear/met a fair number of small companies write their own erp systems (see business of machining podcast as an example - they discuss many of the things you listed) and I think that or an off the shelf mrp system would work better as your business systems are refined and made clearer. We are at a stage where some bigger customers are asking for quality assurance systems, and this makes us consider moving on from clickup or working out how to import into it.

The DIY route may be better because you can write it exactly how you want to work, which seems to me one of the problems with signing onto an existing system. On the other hand, I have looked into some newer SAAS MRP systems (see Fulcrum Pro and Prodsmart for a slightly larger (10-100 person general manufacturing business, there are a bunch of others for machining) and they seem to offer great functionality (e.g. your customer can login to see how the job is going, your website can show stock levels, you can estimate leadtime, you can record evidence of quality checks against jobs). We also need a good way to keep track of CAD/CAM relative to these orders.

Its a complicated topic, particularly if you do custom work with lots of different parts. I would like hear more of what people do and why.
 
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So I see a lot of mention of shop guys not able to use a PC or spreadsheet. Why would you be okay with that? It means your employees are obsolete just like that old Bridgeport that was holding you back. So you should be training them or replacing as needed, or you just won’t move forward.

You'll lose all your talent being so obtuse towards your employees. One of my cell phone illiterate employee's is a phenominal convential machinist. I can literally give him the drawing, the material, and walk away. That is priceless to me.
 
e.g. your customer can login to see how the job is going.

Scary :) I'd hate for a customer to log in and see thier job not moving for days at a time lol.

But seriously thanks for the ideas. I had no idea there is such a variety of software available for this type of managment. I really had no idea what serch terms to use when I started this thread.
 








 
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