I'm looking for a production board for my employees to follow. Something that allows me to add a work order easily and move installations around. Even a seperate board for installations and manufacturing. We work with a variety of 'sign' products and would like to organize the work orders / production.
Any help is totally appreciated.
We are not high tech when it comes to this. We have a cabinet that does not have a door on it, so we took a sheet of plywood and attached it to the front of the cabinet with hinges and an eye hook to make it a door. We then attached clip boards to the front and the back. There are about 30 clipboards in total.
On the front, the top 4 clip boards are work that must be done that day, orders on hold for materials, orders on hold before install, and Orders waiting on vinyl. We then have a spot where a metal clipbard hangs where all orders that are be installed are clipped. My installer checks this every day and installs any orders that are on this clip board as well as checking the Install on hold clip board above to see what's up there and the comments on why.
The rest of the clip boards are used to hold one order per clip board in the order of imporance (set by the completion date on the work order). we work the orders that must be done that day first and then go to these left to right, top down. As we finish the orders on the front, each day I move the orders from the back up to the front and reorganize as necessary. because everything is on clip boards, it's really easy to change at any time and is very efficient. If we have too many orders for the clip boards, I normally clip multiple orders together on the back and watch the dates as they move up to the front to be sure that I don't miss one. My shop manager and I are always aware of what's on the job board and we go through it about once per week to ensure that we have all of the materials that we need.
Again, not high tech, but very effective for us. Until we had this process, we'd miss completion dates and my employees would choose what they wanted to work on instead of what they needed to work on. It lets everyone know what the priority is regardless of whether they have been in the office or out sick for a week.
I also have two dry erase boards inside by the coffee pot in our front office that I use for planning large installation on. Each board is a month and I have the current month and the following month. I put large orders on this board as I make committments to customers to ensure that I don't double book. My shop crew normally looks at this calendar in the morning before their shift to see if they have anything that's coming up that they need to plan for. I pull from my production people to help with big installations that my installer cannot do himself in a reasonable time. It's pretty effective, especially when combined with my clip boards.
We use clear job ticket holders with velcro on a grid. It allows a lot of flexibility.
Here's a link:
http://www.amazon.com/C-Line-Stitched-Ticket-Holders-46912/dp/B000DZ9W9C...
John Maracich | ExpoSigns
www.exposigns.com
New Orleans, Slidell and the Gulf Coast
I had an older retired engineer working for me a number of years ago that built me a job board that worked very well for us. It sat on the floor and was about 5' h x 8' w x 2' d. It held over a hundred work orders. They were right there at eye level and could be moved up, down and sideways as jobs needed. It probably cost about $100.00 to make. If interested, email me at bob@marqueesign.com.
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I believe i have the solution to this problem, we will have a new beta version of our sign shop management software coming out in about two-three weeks. Which handles all quotes, orders, installations, service, and much more, in a very easy to use format.
The software can be custom tailored to meet your needs. If you would like to try out the software free of charge, all you have to do is give us your suggestions, on areas of the software that needs improvement and features you would like to see included, this would be a 3 month trial period.
There will be different versions of the software available to meet the needs of all types of sign companies. If you would be interested in a trial version send an email and a breif description of your company to sales@wilessigns.com