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Manufacturing travellers are product document packs where every single manufacturing process is recorded for tracking and component purposes. These travellers have always worked well in terms of tracking and quality assurance, but are you perhaps wasting time with duplicate entries?

A manufacturing process has tons of irrelevant and redundant procedures that might not be worth including in your manufacturing travellers. In fact, duplicating entries may even confuse the entire process even more. Think about it, if you need to find specific entries or data, you’ll have to sort through all the doubles to finally get to the relevant data you’re looking for.

All these concerns boil down to one simple point: what is the most efficient way of completing manufacturing travellers without worrying about duplicate or pointless information? In this video, we’re going to discuss the four key features to include in a manufacturing traveller to ensure all your processes are running at optimal productivity.

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.

Summary

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.

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