Mobile Work Queues

The IT team at Dartford has put the old company iPhone’s to good use and created a new method of delivering mobile electronic work queues to non-machine resources. This means that areas such as deburring, now have direct access to an electronic work queue, making it easier and faster to book times and stamps.

A major step forward in improving our efficiency

Before we had little accurate, real time visibility of a job as soon as it came off the machine. Now the company’s APS system receives real time data from all resources, which means our schedule is more accurate as it is based on a realistic view of the current work in progress. It also gives people greater visibility of what they need to do next as when the previous operation on the batch card has been completed the Queues will be automatically updated, so that the batch then appears on the Queue for the next resource.

Information at your fingertips

The mobile device can show two Queues – what you are working on (jobs that have been started) and the resource Queue (not yet started but available to collect). Each queued item is a batch operation and the software displays the batch number, operation, drawing number and description. Pressing anywhere else on the Queue item gives you more information and options. If someone has already started working on this job, their name will be shown above the buttons. Each job is also colour coded, either green (operate) or yellow (setup), to allow you to easily distinguish its current status. The mobile device enables you to book both time and stamps. The times are completed automatically by starting and stopping the jobs that you are working on.

It’s still early days for the mobile Queues and the team is working hard to perfect the technology and process but we are confident this is going to make a big difference to our productivity.