Production planning and control

Do you perceive that your competitors produce more efficiently than you? Do you have many problems to be able to meet the expected production volume? Does your daily production fluctuate more than 10%? Do you have full knowledge of all these values? If the answer to more than one of these questions is "no" then you should focus on production planning and control.

These problems are not only a consequence of poor planning and control of production, poor costs, unnecessary purchases, higher structural costs, demotivation of productive personnel, permanent feeling of chaos.

<<< The cost of not knowing your costs >>>

All these are situations that we sometimes mistakenly attribute to the changing environment in which we live, but the truth is that the only thing that is happening is that there is DISORDER.

As we have told you in other posts, many companies (and us at Drew) today are using Monday.com to be able to have a better follow-up of all their processes and this includes production. Since, while the entire production plan can be kept on board, from the creation of the production order, the preparation of the packing, the production, and its final release for quality, it is also possible to control the production line with monitors or screens where employees can see the status of the production order practically and easily; in short, all resources oriented towards the same goal.

Cartera de órdenes de producción en diferentes estados: Producido, por producir, en producción.

With the boards you can generate a portfolio of production orders where you can classify them as finished, pending, in progress, etc. taking into account the stage in which each one is. This can be achieved thanks to the fact that it is an online platform that allows you (anytime, anywhere) to check the status on the dashboard and change it if necessary. You can generate different boards where you cover:

• Need for materials to meet the production plan
• List of critical components to meet the planning
• Packings prepared and pending preparation
• Production order status (waiting, started, delayed, finished)
• Release of the production batch by the Quality department
• Total production time of each batch, production rate, and set up a time

Detalle de orden de producción, producto por producto.

You also have the possibility of detailing the product in question so that you and your employees can see which part of the production line is currently being worked on. With this, you will be able to have control over the amount that is produced, the time in which it is done and, therefore, you will also be able to determine if there is any part in the production line that is causing delays or failures.

Something useful that the tool offers you is the possibility of obtaining indicators, which allows you to make graphs that are updated automatically as the boards do as they are produced.

Indicadores que se van generando a medida que se va realizando la producción

Doing it this way, you will obtain benefits such as transparency, visibility, control, and apart from that you will be able to achieve excellent communication between the different parts of your company, you will also be able to have access to a historical record that will allow you to analyze the results to take action for the future.

Keep in mind that this is something simple that you can do with this type of platform, you can also add automations, integrations with other systems and the most interesting thing is that you can easily move your Excel spreadsheets to a dashboard. This will also make it easier for you to plan future manufacturing, control current manufacturing, and monitor finished manufacturing.

The production order is the individualized control that is carried out for each order or job that is being prepared, it is a system that must be used by companies that produce goods or those that are dedicated to providing services. With the implementation of this you will be able to:

- Gather separately each of the cost elements for each production order, whether finished or in the process of transformation.

- It makes it possible (in a practical way) to subdivide production, according to the needs of your company.

- Have a more analytical control of costs.

-Transform your organization to give it a more analytical vision based on concrete data, and reduce the "feelings" that generate many inefficiencies.

In conclusion, to be able to know and have control over your production, robust planning and exhaustive control of production is necessary; this will also generate a meticulous control of costs, greater production stability, and a work environment motivated by the objectives of production... and an online platform is an excellent tool to carry out this campaign.

What did you think of the article? Will you implement Industry 4.0 in your company?