When an order is running on the line, there are always some people working to keep the line running. Reporting how much ‘human resources’ was involved helps you better understand labour productivity factors like:
- Total amount of man-hours spent on production
- How high OEE can be achieved with different human involvement
- Compare changeover duration with different amounts of human involvement
All of the above have one purpose. To measure how efficiently the labor of workers is used to produce factory products. In PackOS we provide functionality that allows you to monitor labor efficiency and manage your workers’ time. Read the below article to better understand how it all works.
Man-hours can be provided for any activity running on the line: order, changeover, cleaning etc. In PackOS you can open it by clicking on ‘Report resources’, for any running activity:
Expected man-hours in labor efficiency reporting
To specify expected effort for each order, define it in ‘Line configuration’ for SKUs:
You can define how much man-hours is needed for a volume of production. When an order for some volume is created – the expected man-hours are calculated using this indicator. If specified volume is in a different unit then the order, it will be converted using the packing structure definition.
(e.g. Man-hours: 8, Volume: 100, Volume UoM: car – means that an order for 350 car, will be expected to consume 28 man-hours)
Coming soon: You will be able to provide expected man-hours explicitly when creating other activities like changeover or cleaning
Read also about other PackOS functionalities: Dynamic root cause analysis of stoppages on the line.
You can see the calculated, expected man-hours after an order is started:
Inputing labour data
Similarly to manual production input, human resources can be reported manually in the activity resource utilisation page:
The beginning of the time scope marks the activity start. Then, the consequent time frames confirm the amount of man-hours spent in this period.
1. Selecting the time period
There are two modes in reporting manual entries.
- Total – is used for confirmation of all data from the beginning of the activity. For labour, it means confirming the total workload for all personnel from the beginning of the activity. For manual production, it means confirming the total production / waste on the order
- Increment – in this mode you care only about the period between the last entry and the selected time. Especially useful for long-running activities, when you would like to confirm only “last shift” or “last hour”, without knowledge about past human involvement or production.
You can use both modes interchangeably for the same order.
If there are some previous entries, “Increment” mode will show them on the timeline.
After an entry for a specified time period is added, no other entries can overlap this period of time. So make sure that you have captured a complete set of data. Manual reporting for labour and production effectively creates a complete log of entries, without any holes or overlaps.
New entries can be a delayed, or even report a bit into the future. To select the time until which man-hours or production will be reported, you can grab and move the end of the bar:
To select a more precise date, you can hold ‘Alt’ (or ‘Option’) while moving the bar, or click on the date and select it manually:
Additional helper buttons will appear depending on the current time:
- End of current hour / Previous hour – depending of if the current hour is about to end, or has just ended
- Current shift / Previous shift – depending if the shift is about to end, or has just ended
You can use them to quickly adjust the desired scope.
2. Providing man-hours
The man-hours form will let you describe who has been working on the activity for the selected period of time. You can enter all workers names or codes for tracking and reporting purposes. If worker name is omitted, PackOS will generate automatically ‘Worker 1’, ‘Worker 2’ – anonymous “names” for them. In labour man-hours view you can quickly adjust any number of workers, a well as adding the duration of working time for each worker. This helps to control the total labour productivity.
Keep in mind the following constraints when declaring duration for each worker:
- No worker could have worked longer than the selected period of time. If you are reporting man-hours for
10:00 – 14:00, no worker could’ve worked longer than 4 hours. PackOS will reject such entry. - In “Total” mode, no worker could have worked less time, than in the previous entries. Suppose John has worked for 4h in the morning shift, when reporting the next shift (for the same order), I cannot insert time shorter than 4h for John. When you switch between Total/Increment, PackOS will pre-fill the form with the sum of previous entries for each worker.
Note: It is possible to report 0 hours for a period of time. Meaning that e.g. everyone was allocated to another line / issue. You can either use Increment mode and keep the form empty. Or use Total and leave the default values (the sum from previous entries)
You can see the history of entered values below the form:
It will only show Increments – how many man-hours has been added to the order in this period of time. Even if reporting in ‘Total’ mode – they are converted to increments. You can hover over the value to see the details.
If any of the entries prevents you to correct the data, or is simply a mistake – you can remove it with a trash button. The reported period of time will become available again.
You can only remove the last entry, as subsequent entries might have relayed on the previous values. But you can continue removing them as long as you need.
Completed orders
You can view man-hours reported for completed orders in the order summary form, after you click on a completed order:
By using te ‘Report resources’ button at the bottom – you can make adjustments to the data displayed.
Labour efficiency reports about production.
Labour reporting is an important part of production monitoring in manufacturing. In the near future PackOS will give a ability to generate useful report that will answer questions like:
- How much time did a person spent on each line, on different shifts today?
- Which order required the most time for this person each hour today?
- Which order was the most labor-intensive last week?
- What is the total manpower needed to run each line today? this week?
