Workstation Setup

Workstation Setup




Workstation Group





The Realtrac ERP system relies heavily upon the concept of Work Centers and Work Stations. These two concepts are inextricably bonded together.  In the most general sense, a Work Station is an individual unit of machinery on your shop floor. An individual grinder, CNC machine or deburring station would be a Work Station. If your shop has stations designed for hand labor, these too should be work stations you add to Realtrac. A Work Center is a grouping of like Work Stations. So a grouping of similarly sized CNC Machines could all be grouped together under a Work Center called “Small CNC Machines” (in a shop that had two or more distinctly sized Work Centers).

This concept is a very powerful one and brings a lot of benefits to Realtrac companies. During the estimation stage, the Realtrac user doesn’t need to worry about which individual work station a job should be processed on. As long as they have a rough idea of which centers the part will need to travel to during it’s production cycle, that’s enough to estimate the part accurately. When the part is promoted to a job, you can choose how many of the Stations within the Center for the production run. A site with 3 similarly sized CNC machines can tell the operators to run that part on 1, 2 or all 3 machines simultaneously. The Realtrac loading and scheduling system allows for this flexibility. 

There are 2 critical questions that a Realtrac user needs to define in adding centers and stations to the system: 
  1. Which stations should I group in to centers? 
  2. How should I cost my centers and stations? 
The typical criteria to determine how to group work stations in to work centers has to do with the capacity of each station. If two work stations can generally be used interchangeably for operations, then those stations should be grouped into a work center. If a customer has purchased the loading module the software will visually indicate that the load is being spread across the multiple stations in a center. Combining the stations in work centers will allow a user to tell the Realtrac software to use more than one station when for specific router operations if the Realtrac user creating the router chooses to do so.

Costing of both work center and work stations is absolutely critical for a successful business. Before engaging in a discussion specific to determine the dollars, we need to take a moment to examine the relationship between the costing of a Work Center and costing of a Work Station.

The first important concept to keep in mind is that Work Center costing is loaded. By loaded, we mean that it needs to include not only the costs associated with running a typical machine in the center, but it also needs to capture the average costs of an employee running that machine. So in determining the center costs, we need to identify both an average station and an average employee that runs that station. This may not be a trivial exercise, but it is one that is essential to running a profitable business.

Realtrac requires these averaging of employee and station costs since when a user is estimating a job, we can’t tell the true costs of the station that the job may end up on, nor can we tell the rate of the employee that will work on it. In a typical manufacturing environment, these variables will change depending on the flow of the part throughout the shop, and the personnel that is assigned the operation on that day. When estimating and quoting a part for a customer, profit margins of 10% or lower are often seen on the quotes. It’s easy to see how if a user has underestimated the true work center costs by a mere 10%, we have lost the profit from our jobs, or worse, we are essentially paying our customer to make these parts for them.

This cost analysis is vital to winning the business race. Accurate costs for machine operations may not just include the cost of the machine divided by the operating hours in the machine life, it should include the maintenance costs, the repairs, the utilities used, the floor space deployed and sometimes the overhead (front office) costs. Realtrac’s consultants can offer insights from years of working with manufacturing organizations on these calculations. A similar series of considerations can apply to employee costs: how much are benefits and employer taxes, paid time off, employee training and more.

When these costs are captured and factored into your quoting you have much greater surety of performing work at a profitable pace. You will have a view of the kind of work that best fits your shop, you will know what jobs are best to quote on and which to avoid.

The best shops will update these amounts as they learn more about their cost structure and as conditions change in the marketplace or economy. We suggest a review of these amounts no less frequently than twice a year. A problem we see from time to time in many machine shops is that users set these costing rates during the initial setup, and then never challenge and change these assumptions. Even revisiting the rates yearly to adjust for inflation is not enough to really ensure success. It’s essential to measure your true costs against the assumed costs input in both the Work Center and Work Stations. Since these rates are critical to both estimating costs as well as reporting profitability, we can see that making bad assumptions at this stage can lead to a situation where jobs are quoted expecting profits, the Realtrac costing system will tell the user they are making money, but the organizations bank account is empty at the end of the year.


//Workstation Workcenter List

Defined Work Centers/Workstations will be presented in the List.  Existing Workstations can be edited within the grid by simply double clicking on the cell to enable the edit mode.  The Work Centers can be expanded to show its associated Workstations by using the Expand All/Collapse All buttons or the +/- next to each.  Unassigned Workstations can be dragged up-to any Work-center, thus assigning it as such. Workstations can be dragged out of Work-centers to the unassigned Workstation grid as well.


Sorting by Columns

The list can be sorted by any visible column across the top. Simply left click on the column you wish to sort by, and the list will sort in descending order. Another click on the same column will order the list in ascending fashion.



Search Work Center List

Search fields are another way to narrow down your search for a specific Work Center. The yellow search fields above each column can be used to retrieve a Work Center by a single field or use a combination of fields to quickly drill down the list to a specific Work Center.






Create Work Center

Click the 'Create Work Center' button to add a new work center to the list grid.  Once it is in the list, select the Work Center line and navigate to the Work Centers tab (or double click) to enter the Work Center Entry Form details.

Create Work Station

Click the 'Create Work Station' button to add a new work station to the list.  Workstations are added to the 'Unassigned Work Stations' list in the bottom window until they are associated to a Work Center.  Select Work Station line and navigate to the Work Stations tab (or double click) to enter the Work Station Entry Form details.




Assign a Work Station to a Work Center

Select the Work Station in the 'Unassigned Work Station' list, then drag and drop it into the desired Work Center in the List grid above.  The Work Centers can then be expanded/collapsed to show the assigned Work Stations  






//Work Centers

Work Center Entry



Basics

Work Center Name  - User defined field to identify the work center
Number - User defined Work Center number
Rate - The hourly rate for the Work Center.  This rate is used when calculating the estimate costs for a job.
Color Theme - Work Center lines can be color coded for easy identification.





Work Center Options

Work Center Hours of Operation - Default hours and queued hours of operation
  1. Queued Hours
  2. Hours per Day
  3. Days per Week
Work Center Inspection Defaults - Designate a default inspection area 
  1. Inspection Work Center
  2. Inspection Time
Work Center Default Times - Default Setup and Run times for operations when the Work Center is assigned
  1. Setup Time
  2. Run Time
Work Center Auto Close - When enabled, a router operation will auto close for this Work Center.  



//Work Stations

Work Station Listing







Work Station Entry

Basics

Work Center Name - User defined name for individual Workstation
Number - User defined Workstation number
Rate - The hourly rate for the Workstation.  This rate is used when calculating the actual costs for a job.
Color Theme - If the assigned Work Center has a color assigned, the Work Station will automatically have the same color.





Work Station Options

Active - Allows Work Stations to be active or disabled. The deactivated Workstations are kept in the system for work sessions that have been saved and tied to the station.
Print· - Whether to print this Workstation on the Workstation List report. This option is important for Realtrac users that use bar code readers and wish to print a list of stations for shop floor employees to scan and log in to. ·          
Allow Edit at Operation – Allows the user to edit the maintenance record while logged into an operation.
Inspection Workstation - Designate Inspection Workstation as no maintenance required.
Belongs to Work Center – Drop menu of defined Work Centers to associate the Workstation. You must have the Workstation assigned to a Work Center for both building routers as well as the Estimation module.
Notes and Documents - Attach notes, documents, emails and pictures that are pertinent to the Work Station. 



Maintenance

The Maintenance tab consists of two sub tabs designed to track maintenance programs for a Workstation. The two tabs are:

  1. Maintenance Schedule - Which contains a  grid of maintenance tasks
  2. History - Lists a history of maintenance task actions
The tasks are user defined and accessed from the button Labeled 'Task Editor'

Maintenance Schedule




Task Editor - At the bottom of the ‘Maintenance Schedule’ tab is a ‘Task Editor’ button. Pressing the button produces an interface that allows you to create and edit a set of tasks for all Workstations. These tasks are added to a Workstations maintenance schedule as part of that workstation’s ongoing maintenance.





Add Maintenance Line Item - To begin, work station maintenance will ask you to enter the last known maintenance date or select Date Unknown.  Next, fill in the following maintenance fields:

  1. Item - Select a task from the drop menu.  The list is predefined in the Task Editor.
  2. Interval - Specifies the number of Units (Hours) before the task must be executed.
  3. Units - Predefined interval units such as Hours, Days, Months etc.. (Only Hours are currently defined)
  4. Setup Timer - The number of Setup Hours a workstation has accumulated since the last time the task was performed.
  5. Run Timer - The number of Run Hours a workstation has accumulated since the last time the task was performed.  The Timer hours are determined by the accumulated Work Sessions since the Date Last Serviced.
  6. Date Last Serviced -  After a task is performed on a Work Station, a shop floor employee can enter a service completed work session. This work session will      identify that Date Last Serviced.
  7. Employee - The employee who executed the task.

Alerts -  Work Stations with maintenance schedules will send Alerts when maintenance is due.  When the Work Station is selected in the Shop Floor group, a popup alert will appear. 
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History

History of all maintenance can be viewed from the History tab under the Work Stations Maintenance tab. In the example below, we see two records under the ‘Replace Cutting Tool’ task. These records can be edited in similar fashion to the work-sessions interface. Each of these records are created by the employee who completes the task 






Register Maintenance Records

Some shops open an 'Over Head Maintenance' job in Realtrac to track overhead costs and machine maintenance cost.  The router has a 'Machine Maintenance' line to perform the maintenance.
The 'maintenance' job can then be linked to the workstation by pressing the button to search and select the job.

When preparing to log into a workstation maintenance job, the user may right click his name to reveal a menu with an option to ‘Logon Maintenance Job’. 
The Shop Floor job logon interface will open as with the Overhead Job populated.  Proceed to logon by selecting the operation 'Machine Maintenance' then select the Work Station.  

When complete, Logoff of the operation.  A machine maintenance window will appear with the predefined Task List to select which maintenance items were performed, the price and notes field to add descriptions.  This will also reset the schedule timer against continuing work sessions that determine the next scheduled maintenance.





//Cost Calculator

When entering a new workstation, the Cost Calculator tab can be used to determine the ‘Rate’ of the machine.  This can also be used to edit an existing workstation.