Fitfactory’s festive feature

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2. Contents Contents Intro .......................................................................................................................................................... 3 Giving the perfect gift to your factory this Christmas ................................................................. 4 Planning your factory operations more easily than Christmas dinner ................................... 8 Reporting real-time information this Christmas ............................................................................ 12 Make your next Christmas a more relaxing one .......................................................................... 15

3. Fitfactory’s festive feature Fitfactory’s festive feature So this is Christmas, and what have you done? You’ve got your hands on Fitfactory’s festive feature. I bet you’re wondering what you’re about to read! You’ll discover that there’s a few stories in this eBook, because stories are one of the best ways to learn things... and who doesn’t love a story at Christmas? In the run-up to Christmas, we know that most people experience a little more chaos in their lives – buying the perfect present, preparing to cook for the whole family, the kids being off school, alongside the regular stresses of daily life. At Fitfactory, we provide digital technology that helps manufacturers work more productively. So, we wanted to create a product that would give you some advice on how to handle your working methods in the factory, and give you more time to focus on festivities at home. We brainstormed and we researched, but before long, we realised that it was actually very simple. Our thinking process for our job was actually very similar to the process of coming up with a gift idea for that difficult family member at Christmas time. Doesn’t sound like much of a revelation, does it? Well, that’s when we realised that many manufacturing processes are comparable to what many experience throughout December. Our result became simple; we decided to write Christmas stories for manufacturers! Not only will you realise that you aren’t alone in the Christmas chaos, but you’ll also learn some tips on how to make your factory smarter. Our Christmas stories will teach you the importance of having an adaptable planning system, why spreadsheets aren’t one-size-fits-all, how paper-based systems can negatively affect your business, and just how useful an integrated drag-and-drop report builder can be for your factory. So, whether you’ve got your feet up after a priority order has been completed just before Christmas, or you’ve saved this book for some bedtime reading, delve in to discover just how closely these two worlds collide!

4. Giving the perfect gift to your factory Giving the perfect gift to your factory this Christmas this Christmas With multiple presents to buy before Christmas day, it can be difficult to know where to start. Some people make paper checklists, some use their phones, others decide to do shopping online. No matter how you coordinate your present-buying process, you often end up in a mad rush when December comes. The paper list you made was nowhere to be seen when you actually needed it. Maybe your phone has died from too much scrolling whilst stood in shopping queues, made worse by the pandemic. You had ideas of what to buy for people months ago, but you forgot to bookmark some and others are out of stock! We all know the expense of Christmas, but most of us do everything possible to minimise costs and get organised during the festive period. However, we can almost guarantee that you aren’t doing this as successfully in your factory checklists. You probably have hundreds of reasons for checklists both on the shop floor and in the office. Some are handy when getting a job done, but others are a requirement to ensure that you are conforming to standards, such as those laid out in the ISO 9001 accreditation. We all know that having an efficient way to capture data and produce audit trails will help us be more productive and reduce costs, as it helps us become more organised and reliable. But are we being as efficient as possible? Why don’t we take a look at a week in December. 4

5. 2 weeks ‘til Christmas 2 weeks ‘til Christmas It’s two weeks before the man in red slides down your chimney. You’ve had a frantic weekend of Christmas shopping after all of the shops have reopened following England’s second lockdown. It’s safe to say that you feel anything but prepared for Christmas day! You enter the factory with high hopes that this feeling won’t be present (no pun intended) in your workplace. Your first job is to complete a return to work form for one of your Machine Operative employees. You jot some notes down in a word document and scan the employee’s doctor’s note in as evidence that they are well enough to work. After the meeting, you format the document, save the image and then input it into your document. It’s now Tuesday, the day of your internal audit. It’s vital that it goes well because you’re suspecting an external audit is due soon. Despite this, you know that issues might arise, but it’s accurate documentation that will determine the audit’s success. You take on the role of documenting the audit, and spend most of your day jotting down notes as it’s taking place. fitfactory.com

6. The following day, you sit in the office trying to decipher your rushed notes with difficulty. You spend several hours typing notes up. Then, you return to the shop floor to delegate tasks. There have been a few non-conformances that have arisen during the internal audit, so you make sure that these are prioritised. At the end of your shift, you head straight to the nearest retail park to continue with your Christmas shopping. A member of your family has asked for a certain “blue shirt with a pocket on it” for Christmas, but you have no picture of it and there are 14 blue shirts in the shop! The following day quickly becomes a struggle. You head to the shop floor to catch up with your employees and learn that hardly anything has been actioned. The staff have read your report, but can’t make sense of it. The non-conformance procedure is still in its preliminary stages because they aren’t sure exactly which part of the machine is being referred to in your factory checklists. Oh no, this is reminding you of your nightmare Christmas shopping trip last night! By Friday morning, you are feeling mentally exhausted. You still need to file away the COVID-19 Visitor Log for the week. However, the pages are nowhere to be seen when you arrive at the office. Not only have you got no evidence of documentation for the Government’s Track and Trace scheme, but you also have a GDPR issue to deal with. If anyone that has entered the factory tests positive, you have no way to contact other visitors. Whilst this is much more of a problem than your Christmas shopping dilemmas, you can’t help but think of the long-lost list that you wrote after a joint video call with family a couple of weeks back. If you hadn’t misplaced it, you’d know what to buy without as many problems! Capture data using digital factory checklists Capture data using digital factory checklists Unfortunately, Fitfactory can’t supply an army of Christmas elves to make your presents… However, we do produce software that will help you capture factory checklists digitally. We offer a simple system that can be integrated with your ERP/MRP software to eliminate all of the issues that you regularly experience with spreadsheets or paper-based forms. Our Data Capture module will replace fragmented processes whilst helping you to become fit for Industry 4.0. 6

7. Rather than relying on a manual template and lots of editing, simply fill out online factory checklists that enable you to upload photos as evidence. This will help you when completing return to work forms, visitor logs, and even internal audits. You’ll no longer have to worry about employees understanding your reports or manually delegating tasks. When you identify an issue, you can write a note, attach a photo of the problem and assign a corrective action right away, as you capture it. Your team will be able to easily identify the issue and work on the corrective action. You can streamline your NCR process in no time. You can monitor who is completing tasks on the dashboard. A full audit trail means that you will know exactly who has edited forms and when they did it. It’s global news that touching items increases the risk of transmit- ting COVID-19. It seems ironic to make visitors sign in to aid traceability when they are using the same pen and paper as others. By using Data Capture, this process will become much smarter. Record details digitally, making them safer and your data more secure. Our system also enables you to share documents digitally, reducing cross-contamination and saving the trees. Oh no, now that the shopping is sorted, you’ve got the Christmas Dinner to focus on... fitfactory.com

8. Planning your factory operations more Planning your factory operations more easily than Christmas dinner easily than Christmas dinner Christmas dinner is an integral part of the 25th December. There’s a high chance that you’ll be attempting to cook the perfect roast, especially if you’re cooking for other people too. You know that your turkey has to go in the oven before your sprouts, that’s obvious. However, the mental planning you have done is all jumbled up because of the day’s festivities. You can’t remember whether your roast spuds are meant to go in at quarter to or quarter past the hour! They could burn to a crisp whilst you’re still working your magic on the gravy if you don’t do it at the right time! With all the festive commotion that Christmas dinner causes, there’s nothing worse than going to work and it being chaotic. You have multiple machines to work and new orders coming in over the busy period. We know that this makes it difficult to undertake efficient planning for your factory. Let’s rewind a few days. 8

9. Planning for your factory the week before Christmas Planning for your factory the week before Christmas You enter the factory the week before Christmas day with the best intentions to remain on target and deliver all jobs on-time in full. You currently use Excel to complete your planning because it’s easy to use and you already have it installed. It’s a good option… or so it seems. However, you’ve spent hours inputting data into the spreadsheet and come in the following day to realise that it didn’t save properly. Now, all of your hard work has vanished and you have to start again. You prepare a new schedule, taking machinery and priority jobs into account. Now it’s just about sticking to it, right? Unfortunately, the chances are that after just a few hours of your meticulous organising, you need to start again. Whether you have employee absences, an urgent order being received, a machine fault or a missed delivery, your schedule is out of the window. You now need to work hard to correct this before anything else happens. Once your schedule is rebuilt, your employees continue working. At the end of your shift, you go home to get your shopping list for Christmas Dinner and head to the supermarket. As you’re walking through the aisles, you clock that a lot of the items will be out of date before the big day. So, you decide to revisit just before Christmas Eve. fitfactory.com

10. The downfall of spreadsheets The downfall of spreadsheets On your return to work the following day, it’s time to catch up with employees. However, the manager is off and now you have to spend time on the shop floor working out what has been completed. You don’t know whether yesterday’s jobs were completed on- time and in full. An employee informs you that the manager made another copy of the schedule, but you can’t find it on your computer. There are multiple versions floating round, and you don’t want to work on an outdated copy – all the information will be wrong. It’s now the 23rd December, and your day is extremely busy as a machine breaks down, causing an emergency fix. Following this, you have spent hours on planning for your factory to ensure priority jobs are still delivered on time. You now need to get some last-minute fresh produce for the perfectly planned Christmas dinner. The first one you visit has sold out of cream, and you absolutely cannot serve your Christmas pudding without it! You also remember that (from past experience) the turkeys are better in the local farm shop. You decide to head to the nearest shop for the cream, and then go and buy your turkey. By the time you get to the farm shop, it’s closed! You had checked the opening hours online prior to visiting, so you knew that you wouldn’t be too late. However, there’s a note on the door stating that they had to close two days ago due to a member of the team testing positive for COVID-19. You had no idea as this wasn’t communicated online. You now have no turkey and it’s Christmas Eve tomorrow, meaning all of the shops close early! What an unexpected disaster. Luckily, a member of your household bubble manages to buy a turkey from another shop on Christmas Eve. Phew! It’s a relief. However, you know that if you had better planning with updated information, then this issue wouldn’t have occurred. This reminds 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Planning your factory orders digitally Planning your factory orders digitally Here at Fitfactory, we’re better at eating Christmas dinner than helping you to organise it. However, we do have a solution for your manufacturing needs. We can offer you Europe’s leading scheduling platform that can solve all of the discussed issues with planning for your factory. Our software has the capacity to juggle hundreds of jobs simultaneously whilst taking resource availability and priority orders into account. 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 You will no longer need guesswork to decide whether you should accept that potential order just before Christmas. Our Scheduler will allow you to conduct a what-if analysis on jobs before you accept them. So, you can view the effect on the shop floor and ensure that you have the resources to deliver to the agreed delivery date. 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 10

11. Machinery often breaks down if it’s overworked. You probably know that, but you may not know that a scheduling system can help this. Our Scheduler can work out maintenance checks by analysing the expected usage of each machine. You can then use the system to plan orders automatically around machine downtime, subsequently optimising your productivity. Our Scheduler will also enable you to create groups that work together to improve your planning process. You can group machines together that do the same job and decide later which job each one will run. This would be a daunting manual task in Excel, whereas our software will split jobs between machines whilst maintaining full traceability. There will be no more worries about saving work properly or having multiple versions of your schedule. The software works with real-time information, giving you confidence when planning. You can automatically schedule jobs in an optimal pattern so you improve on key KPIs such as OTIF and customer satisfaction. You can work on performance and WIP status with the drag and drop builder, making it simple to understand your capacity limits and optimise the factory. Everything is coming together, and now you just need to tackle Christmas Day! 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

12. Reporting real-time information Reporting real-time information this Christmas this Christmas You’ve decided to bubble up with two other households this year, and you’re the host. After the commotion of your Christmas shopping trips, one of your son’s presents isn’t due to arrive until Christmas Eve. This gives you minimal time to check it’s right. Some family members are travelling across the country on Christmas Eve. There’s no doubt that the roads will be chaotic as everyone has similar plans. You’ve also been warned that you HAVE to watch the TV Christmas specials on Christmas Day because it’s not really Christmas without them. There’s lots to do at Christmas time, and we don’t mean drinking Baileys and wandering around Christmas markets. For the person hosting on Christmas Day, it can be easy to feel overwhelmed by people’s requests and an overload of information. There’s nothing worse than a cluttered head space, especially if you have work commitments floating around your brain too. You may use a digital MRP/ERP system to track KPIs, create tables of data and schedule reports weekly so that you can monitor productivity. However, we know that no matter how amazing your system is, there will be drawbacks. Let’s fast forward a little. MERRY CHRISTMAS 12

13. 4pm on Christmas Eve 4pm on Christmas Eve T’was the night before Christmas, and all through the house. You’re hard at work in the factory, leaving Christmas planning to your spouse! You know that you need to get back shortly because there’s so much to do, but you can’t help but dread it. You may have a couple of days off, but that doesn’t mean that you can relax. You’ve already tackled the shops this year so you have all (but one) of your presents. A household member managed to source the ever-important turkey, meaning you now have all components for the perfect Christmas dinner. Despite this, you still have the hosting to accomplish and you’ve got to ensure that the factory remains productive in your absence. You have asked one of the shop floor operatives to call you when vital orders are complete. It’s now 7pm and you’ve heard nothing about your son’s parcel that’s due. You end up discussing the priority job with your employee for over 20 minutes. They can’t give you detailed information because the machine is still working, but they’ve said it will be finished tonight. Despite this, you can’t give the customer an update because you can’t risk something going wrong and then delaying them. After getting off the phone, you track your parcel using an app and see that you are his next stop. Perfect! You check traffic updates on your phone after finishing wrapping. Your family call and say that they’re stuck in queues but they have traffic updates turned on. You work out that they will be arriving within the next hour and set a timer to make some food when they are nearby. If only a timer was this effective back at work! You wouldn’t have to keep a close eye on incoming orders in the case that one is a priority customer. Meanwhile, your factory operatives are working hard to finalise orders before their days off. You’ve already scheduled a report for 29th of December to catch up, but it means employees have to wait a few days to know whether they achieved targets. You wish that getting real-time information for the factory was as easy as checking traffic updates. Christmas Day! Christmas Day! You’re still waiting for an update on the arrival of your final household within the bubble, and you can’t continue cooking until you have this information. Everyone’s feeling festive after handing out presents, but your partner can’t contain their excitement over the Christmas Specials. Even though your TV box will work out clashes automatically, the bumper Radio Times has been highlighted within an inch of its life! They won’t be happy unless Christmas dinner is ticked off before the first TV programme starts! You’re trying to break down all of the information you have about cooking times, arrival times and programme times. With so many different sources of information, it’s really difficult. MERRY CHRISTMAS

14. A lack of real-time information A lack of real-time information With a little help from the family, Christmas Day was a success. It’s back to reality again, and you’re in the office looking over the data from the last few days. You use the generated report to update employees. A few staff members said that the report’s insights helps them to improve, but you’re worried that their previous work wasn’t up to scratch. One of your customers has complained that a late delivery on the 23rd of December has resulted in their product being delayed. It’s safe to say that they aren’t happy. However, you don’t know why, because as far as your MRP/ERP system is concerned, the machine was operating as planned. The employees who worked on the job are still off, so you won’t have any information from them until tomorrow. Your customer feedback doesn’t match this, and the confusion over the data reminds you of your Christmas routine all over again. Using real-time information to improve Using real-time information to improve Our team at Fitfactory are amazing at creating digital solutions, but sadly we don’t have one for hosting at Christmas. Despite this, we do have the perfect tool that to help you monitor real-time information on your factory. It allows you to integrate several different data sources and analyse them together so you always have a cohesive view of your factory, allowing you to make decisions at the right time. Our Business Intelligence module will monitor real-time data that you can access anywhere at the click of a button. Remember the ease of tracking the delivery drive back on Christmas Eve? Well, with Business Intelligence, you will find tracking orders this simple in your factory too. You can access the module on a phone, laptop, or tablet and view real-time information from jobs as they happen. It can be accessed right on the shop floor, and many of our customers implement screens on the shop floor so staff can monitor the KPIs and updates that are most important to them and progress quickly. And, you won’t need to worry about giving customers the wrong information, as the software pulls internal and external data sources together to give a unified understanding of productivity. You can share real-time reports with customers to maintain full traceability. Our drag-and-drop report builder makes your job simple, and you won’t have to schedule them to run once per week anymore. New reports will make it easy for you to explore your data in new ways, meaning that you won’t suffer from mismatched information. With our Business Intelligence module, you’ll never worry about missing a priority order again. You can set up alerts so that you know when a new request is received or when important changes occur. Have the most intelligent Christmas possible and Take advantage of our tool so that you can maximise productivity in the factory whilst worrying less at Christmas. 14

15. Make your next Christmas Make your next Christmas a more relaxing one a more relaxing one So, the big day comes and goes again for another year. Phew! That was exhausting. Next year I’ll have to be more organised – it seems we all say the same thing every year. But it’s like we never learn. And that’s the fun of Christmas. The chaos, the family arguments when you’re accused of cheating in the family quiz, the last-minute shopping. But for your factory, the chaos is not so fun. With your new tools, you can improve traceability, record details securely, analyse machine usability in-depth, use real-time information to plan efficiently and integrate several sources of data to make highly accurate reports! You’ll be well on your way to creating your very own smart factory very own smart factory. So, you can keep the chaos of Christmas to your family home. At Fitfactory, we’re supporting more than 400 manufacturers to streamline operations, simplify quality management, and increase customer satisfaction. With our range of software available from as little as £15/month including production control, to production planning, quality management and business intelligence, making your factory fit has never been easier. Learn more about our Fitfactory products today, so next year, you’ll have a very Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year, knowing it’s a good one, without any fear. www.fitfactory.com

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