Are your manufacturing travellers optimised for efficiency? While they’re crucial for tracking processes and ensuring quality, unnecessary duplicate entries can lead to confusion and wasted time. Streamlining your manufacturing travellers is essential to eliminate redundancies and improve productivity. In this blog post, we’ll explore the essential features that every manufacturing traveller should include to enhance operational efficiency and streamline your production processes.

In this article:

• Order Information
• High-Level Product Routing
• Standard Times
• Data Capture

Order Information

This should cover things like who the customer is; what the product is; what the batch quantity is. Also, if there are any special requirements, for example, colour options or different voltage levels. These should all be clear on the manufacturing travellers. As a result, whoever gets it will know exactly what is being built, who it’s for, or if it’s for stock.

High-Level Product Routing

These are the operations that need doing and the sequence in which they need to be done. Also, if there are any preconditions like doing something in a specific order, it should be clear on the travellers.

Standard Times

These are the standard times in the MRP system, or that come from engineering. They show how long it should take to do each operation. As a result, it is clear what is expected to build product efficiency and reach the required productivity.

Data Capture

So the key things that you need are – who did each operation, when they started and when they finished. Potentially, you can capture the actual cycle times, or when it was done. Thereafter, you can go as far as batch quantity, serial numbers, and inspections and checks that need doing.  Typically, this information lives on the manufacturing travellers and moves with the product until it gets finished. Following that, the data gets processed at the end of the line.

Final Thoughts

So to recap, the four things I think are needed in manufacturing travellers are:

• • Order information.
  • Product routing.
  • Standard times.
  • Clear, easy data capture fields.