Industrial Engineering Internship Help?

[CalPoly10]

Hello. This may be a weird question for these forums, but here we go.

I am a 3rd year Industrial Engineer at Cal Poly, and I recently gained an internship at a manufacturing plant.

My project is to optimize the way production/employee times are recorded, input, and used to estimate costs for a BOM. Currently, the plant has about 30 low-education workers. There are 3 floor bosses that manage the workers.

The process (currently) is for the employee to fill in a time sheet every day. The time sheet layout is made for detailed analysis of daily jobs (drilling, cutting, machining, etc., and the time spend on each), but all the employees just fill out the total hours worked, because they can work on many processes in one day.

We are trying to figure out a method for this time management system to become much more accurate.

My ideas are:
Force employees to fill in time cards either hourly or bi-hourly.
Allow 5 minute break every 2 hours for employees to recap their work.

Any input? Thanks.

 

[CalPoly10]

I'm thinking something along the lines of a few computer systems on the work floor, maybe 2.

Hopefully I can find a system that allows employees to enter an EMPL# and password, so they can manage their work times at the end of the day.

That information can then be submitted to a database, which cancels out paperwork?

 

[mikeyredk]

Companies won't want to spend money if they don't have to. With this project I would ask your manager what are the resources that are allocated towards the project and what is the budget towards the process change. What is the driving force for the change people won't change because an intern half there age tells them they have to change… I know personally*… the process might not be broken you have to give them incentive to change such as pressure from above to change and if there union… Good Luck…

BTW Good Luck on your internship

 

[Rodimus Prime]

well I would not require the employees to fill out the cards like you are wanting them to because it will never happen and you will lose a lot more productivity.

if anything the job should fall on the floor bosses to keep track of how many people they have doing what each day.

This is your only hope.....

 

[mikeyredk]

An idea just popped into my head… don't know why you guys have not done this yet… Why not make them sign into the station there going to be working at and make them sign out… But you will need a change management process hope that helps

 

[CalPoly10]

I don't think the budget is an issue. What I mean by that is, my boss wants me to come up with great ideas for change. From there, we will discuss if they are cost effective and worthwhile. I don't want to shoot a great idea down just because it may cost a bit of money.

Any other input? I like the idea of having employees sign in/out, but for this factory floor, I'm not sure that will be effective. I am leaning towards employees updating their time sheets every so often...

 

[adroit]

If budget is not an issue why not get some kind of card scanner for each station .

The idea is to have every employee carry their ID card with them and they could just quickly scan the card before and after they use the each station. This way you could just have a computer that tracks all the time for each employee on each work station instead of having them filling it out.

 

[CalPoly10]

Ok, here's the real problem:

The company currently uses an inventory/job-tracking/costing software for all their needs. The working times (per station) are entered manually by the secretary at the end of the day. The times are given to her from the floor boss, who receives a time sheet from each employee at the end of the day. The problem is, those time sheets are fairly innacurate.

While we can implement a card system, so employees can swipe their job entry/exit times accurately, the information will still not be implemented into the current software that is used. The secretary will once again have to manually enter these times for each employee.

At this point, I am wondering if it is worth it. I have a few ideas for a more effective manual time management system. The cost of installing an electronic system could run high, and in the end, if it doesn't automatically integrate with the companies software (DBA Manufacturing Software), what's the use?

 

[Sesshi]

The workers shouldn't drive the process. The process should drive the workers.