"Workforce Productivity for the Steel Industry"

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"The backbone of Radley's WorkForce Productivity Solutions is x/DC, a .Net, XML based data collection development and integration platform."
Source : Radley Corporation

Resources Related to Workforce Productivity for the Steel Industry:

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Workforce Productivity for the Steel Industry

Lean Times

 - nothing new for the steel industry…

A tough economy is nothing new to the Steel Industry. For some time now, the steel industry has been working hard to lower costs, improve quality and efficiencies, and increase customer satisfaction. Because it is so important to meet customers' requirement to produce quality products, delivered on-time, and stay on-budget, many companies have invested significant sums of money in technology to improve their business processes.

As has been proven time and again by successful companies, the correct technology, deployed in a well managed organization with clearly defined estimating, procurement, fabrication, and shipping processes, is more likely to consistently meet customer's requirements on-schedule and on-budget. However, to measure realized business value from these technology solutions, companies must correctly evaluate their return on investment (ROI).

"Fundamentally, a pure cost-oriented approach like Total Cost of Ownership does not allow an organization to measure the full economic impact of the investment," R. Wang of Forrester Research, Inc. explained. "By measuring not just cost and financial benefits, but also risk or uncertainty, [and] future flexibility, enterprises can establish a more inclusive and accurate picture of the return on investment...

While cost calculations are easier to define," he added, "benefits, risks and flexibility can be simplified by applying rules of thumb and benchmark data ...".

How to Tell if the Benefits Fit

After you've identified the type of technology you want to deploy, the next step is to determine the benefits that your organization will derive from implementing the technology. Benefits can be classified in two ways: hard benefits that result in a tangible cash benefit; and soft benefits that are not easily quantifiable in hard dollar terms. Even though they don't provide a cash benefit, soft benefits are important because they quantify other factors that may be important when evaluating whether to proceed with the investment.

Identifying the Technology

The ultimate enterprise solution must be driven not only by your customers' needs, but also by the internal business intelligence needs of manufacturing, i.e., knowing the status of what is where in the process at any given time, and the needs of senior management to monitor business performance. Senior management must be directly involved at the early stages of the process to establish goals and deliverables .Once the goals are identified, it is essential that key and knowledgeable members of management and manufacturing work closely to achieve those goals. In most cases, much of the information necessary to achieve measureable productivity gains already resides in the existing systems (manufacturing and others), so a thorough audit of all systems and functionality should be performed prior to selecting additional technologies to add to the mix.

Clearly identifying your requirements will help you find exactly the right solution.

With a well integrated, enterprise wide data collection platform, the foundation for streamlining and reducing errors is in place. The combination of business system database access (to multiple systems if required) and the abilities to flexibly update business applications from a single scanning process and direct your workforce, provides a platform for continuous business process improvement and increasing workforce productivity — the real ROI.

A good first step to identifying your goals is to ask incisive questions about issues you currently encounter. The answers often reveal your essential needs and help you ascertain the most appropriate technology to meet those needs.

Sample Questions

Your customer is on the phone asking about an assembly required at the job. How long does it take to get an accurate view of your work in production?

Production tracking is often a manual process that is not integrated into the company's business system.

By the time relevant information is gathered and compiled, it is no longer accurate. When data is collected automatically during the work process a real-time view can be created of what's going on in the shop.

The current location of all assemblies, by sequence, lot, work area, is available at any time. This feature not only reduces the time to get information to management, but also eliminates disruptions in the shop caused by workers trying to track down information.

How much profit did we make on that job?

Generally, how accurately you can calculate labor costs greatly impacts your estimating process. Most often, companies rely on worker's "guesstimates" of how much time they spend on each task. Over time, even small wrong guesses can have a large effect on your numbers.

Automatically collecting work time data eliminates the need for guess work. You will have actual start and stop times scanned during production.

Supervisors can review and, when necessary, edit the labor information for their employees.

You can even reward your employees with incentive programs based on actual performance.

How often have you replaced assemblies that actually did make it to the job site?

When the customer calls do you start with an apology and a promise for a re-make, and then add priority delivery at your expense? With an automated data collection system you can immediately inform the customer of the exact date and time, on what trailer, and by which employee, their missing assembly was loaded, see what other assemblies were loaded with the "missing" one, and be able to verify that they were delivered.

In addition, miscounts during loading are virtually eliminated as each assembly is validated as it is loaded. Double counting or loading assemblies that belong to other jobs is not allowed. You can have 100% confidence that an assembly was shipped. When you can provide proof of delivery, you will earn the reputation of a company who is on the ball.

One of your suppliers just called and said that there is a problem with some steel that they sent you. Where is that steel? Who can I send to find that steel? Where are they?

Turning your product safety and quality compliance initiatives into productivity boosters, Radley's Traceability solution gives you the ability to collect, track, and view attribute history and status, anywhere along the supply chain. Quickly respond to customer inquiries by easily checking process history right from your desktop.

Add visibility to subtle process and quality attributes that differentiate your product from the competitions. Integrated seamlessly with your ERP, Radley Product Traceability is so much more than just lot/serial tracking. You have complete quality control of your production processes with cradle-to-grave attribute traceability.

With automated data collection you can have every assembly accounted for and all shipments validated and recorded, correctly - right now!

Personnel can take action while it still matters and shop paperwork will no longer hold up the production process-

WorkForce Productivity

Today, as never before, we are being challenged to be more productive, to do more with less. Increasing productivity involves so much more than just cost cutting. It is about increasing the value of the output of your work force. It is about managing of your resources wisely and efficiently.

Radley’s WorkForce Productivity Suite is a mobile computing and data collection system that streamlines data entry and daily operations, and automates data flow. Tightly integrated with your MRP, it provides a user-friendly interface, and enhances the functionality of your tracking and shipping processes giving you a complete work force optimization solution. Delivering real time information that is critical to adapting to today’s ever-changing business climate; Radley WorkForce Productivity Suite validates from and updates your MRP database with each completion - as it happens. Without separate databases and manual data entry, better data is available immediately. Timely data collection let’s you create a “closed loop” system enabling you to adjust your estimating to better reflect reality.

Improved data accuracy, greater worker productivity, and more efficient operational performance is more realistically achieveable than you may think

Progress Tracking

When data is collected automatically during the work process, a real-time view is created of what's going on in the shop. Completed assemblies are scanned from anywhere in the shop and are immediately recorded in your MRP via a wireless network.

You know the current location of all assemblies, by work area, at any time, right from your desktop or handheld device. You have a real-time view of what's going on in the shop.

Real-Time Visibility

The ability to quickly respond to critical business events and take immediate, proactive action using highly visual, personalized dashboards and reports is a proven productivity booster. Displaying event data from your MRP or other key applications, Radley's Productivity

Monitor provides graphical displays of your key performance metrics plus real-time alerts.

Error-Proof Shipping

You can have 100% confidence that if your screen says an assembly was shipped, it was, in fact, shipped. How often have you replaced assemblies that actually did make it to the job site? When the customer calls do you start with an apology and a promise for a re-make, and then add priority delivery at your expense? With

Radley x/DC you can immediately inform the customer of the exact date and time, on what trailer, and by which employee, their missing assembly was loaded. You will also see

Magnets are only one way of attaching labels.

Magnets are only one way of attaching labels.

what other assemblies were loaded with the "missing" one, and be able to verify that they were delivered. In addition, miscounts during loading are virtually eliminated because x/

DC validates each assembly as it is loaded. Double counting of the same piece or loading assemblies that belong to other jobs is not allowed.

Error proofing the shipping process alone may provide the return needed to justify your total barcode system investment.

Subcontractor-Labeling

Using their own Windows PC, a web browser, and a bar code label printer, your subcontractor can print and apply labels that meet your specifications.

When materials arrive at the job site, they have your barcodes in your format.

Time & Attendance

Punching a time clock is easy. Clocking- in and clocking-out is a very common business process. What goes unnoticed is the amount of time and effort needed to set up and monitor shift schedules, handle vacation time proactively, and track overtime properly. Radley's Time and Attendance makes it simple. With less paper, fewer mistakes, and free from manual time management tasks, your key supervisors and administrators become revenue-generators who can get more product out the door, or maybe, even have the time to develop creative ideas for improving your production processes.

Labor Tracking

With minimal data entry, production personnel can enter labor and part completion data and backflush operations.

Use barcodes and/or machine integration to generate production transactions and to automate the movement of assemblies through

Work Order operations. Heat Numbers, Lot & Serial Numbers, parts moved between operations, machine downtime and reason codes, machine usage, queue building or operators'

out-of-work, scrap reasons, and held work orders with reason and location can all be captured. Labor Tracking also supports crew-based transactions and work cell labor collection.

Work Order time can be split using several allocation methods.

Your ERP is automatically updated with labor hours, machine hours, completed and scrapped quantities and manufacturing completions.

Complete transaction history and exception reporting capabilities are standard. And, your data is secure with Supervisor review, maintenance and approval of all labor transactions.

Product Traceability

Radley's Traceability solution gives you the ability to collect, track, and view attribute history and status, anywhere or anytime. You will be able to respond quickly to customer inquiries by easily checking process history, including by heat or cast numbers, right from your desktop.

You have added visibility to subtle process and quality attributes that differentiate your product from the competitions. Integrated seamlessly with your ERP, Radley Product Traceability is so much more than just lot/

serial tracking. You have complete quality control of your production processes with cradle-to-grave attribute traceability.

What to Expect

You can expect to receive personal attention and prompt response from a dedicated professional staff of experienced project managers and technical support personnel. When you call Radley, installation, training, and ongoing support, as well as professional consulting services to assist in all phases of your implementation process, are readily available.

Radley's Productivity Solutions are the tools you need to simplify business processes, improve productivity, and provide cost savings throughout your operations. From first contact to full implementation and beyond, Radley's dedicated staff provides an unparalleled level of expertise for both your software and hardware requirements.

How to Begin

Call us. We will be happy to answer any questions you may have. We are sure you will agree that exceptional service and support define the Radley difference.

Contact Information

Call: 1-616-554-9060 eMail: steel@radley.com