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Job Tracking Software and Mobile Devices

When it comes to the tracking of individual aspects of a job through a manufacturing facility, we’ve come a long way from markings on cards or paper “travelers” which literally travel with the item being manufactured. A lot of automation has been used for decades in the movement from one workcenter or line to the next. Items and incoming components have been identified via barcodes in the past and are now being converted to RFID tags, which can be read cleaner and faster. This works amazingly well on smaller items such as pop cans, circuit cards, boxes of cereal and the like.

Manufacturing ERP Software. Leverage the power of browser based thin client technology.

But what of larger items? Is this level of automation necessary for the assembly of an automobile, a bathtub, or a huge roll of foil that’s to be coated and then slit for use as candy wrappers? Probably not. And what of the printers for the barcode labels that go on the rolls of wrapper foil, or which identify the contents of a shrink-wrapped pallet that’s ready for printing? Let’s see here, put one at each machine … one on the loading dock at receiving … one at the storage in case a pallet is split … one in the office area … Oh, and each computer on the floor needs a barcode scanner … and put one on the forklift …

There’s a better way, especially when using a Job Tracking Software system.

Waitresses at some restaurants now are using full-blown industrial handheld scanners with built-in web browsers to take orders, make additions to orders, and perform credit card processing, all without leaving the customers’ table. ‘Dupes’ of orders are immediately sent to a printer in kitchen for preparation by the chefs. And at the end of the meal, a small wireless printer attached to the server’s waist prints the final bill tableside for the credit card signature, while another in the office prints one for daily accounting. Traveling phlebotomists in large hospitals are using the same setup to scan patients’ armbands before drawing blood, with the waistband printer printing the correct labels for the correct tests for the correct number of blood vials on-the-spot.

This same setup can be used in a Job Tracking Software system on the factory floor. Forklift drivers could use this system when receiving raw materials to print labels, and scan finished goods as they’re shipped. On the floor, workcenter leaders could do the same at the machines, along with using the handheld device to log workers into and out of a certain job. The scanners could be used for inventory purposes plantwide, including in the office area. And the printers could see even further use printing inventory labels for all assets in the facility.

Using technologies in a progressive manner in a manufacturing facility can lead to greater flexibility in managing and retrieving data via a Job Tracking Software system. Developing those systems further to encompass newer technologies in imaginative ways can lead to even more progress.