The first feature update of 2021: Unit Tracking

After finally leaving the year 2020 behind us, we all look towards this new year with hope and renewed strength. For us, that means heading full steam ahead into the new and exciting changes we want to bring to just plan it this year. We already started this by showing you our new and powerful Power BI dashboard and I am happy to continue by introducing an often-requested update to the Execute Mode: unit tracking.

Unit Tracking

Before this update, all our shopfloor feedback was time-based. We asked, “When did a task start and end?” and “How long do you still need to finish it from now on?”.

We heard from a lot of our customers that, while proficient, it's not really how their operators are thinking. They don’t think: “I will need 2 hours tomorrow to finish this” but think more along the lines of “As I finished 30 units already, I still need to finish another 20 of this.” We heard you and got to work.

You can activate the new unit tracking in your scheduling setting by changing the Execute Tracking option and setting it to “Quantity-based”.

It is important to note that if you make this change in a running plan, the plan will change, as there is currently no information about the “Approved Total Quantity” for any running task. Therefore, the running tasks will be rescheduled assuming they still have all units to make.

Set the new task ‘Total Quantity’.

We redesigned the ‘Execute tab’ to meet the new execution choice: when the setting is “Quantity-based” the ‘From now’ field has disappeared, and instead we have two new fields: ‘Approved Total Quantity’ and ‘Shopfloor Total Quantity’. The user can set the Total Quantity of a selected task (after starting it) by entering a value into ‘Shopfloor Total Quantity’ and afterward clicking Set Shopfloor Data as usual. Note: when an operator sets a value into ‘Shopfloor Total Quantity’ then this always refers to “now” or in other words exactly the moment when he clicks the set data button.

What will happen on approval?

On approval the “Approved Total Quantity” of a task will be overwritten with the value of the “Shopfloor Total Quantity”, meaning that the Operator needs to enter the new total that has been done so far, and not just adding the amount they finished in this shift.

Additionally, the calculation of the “Push-to date”, which will be the new planning start for the schedule, is now tied to the time of setting the feedback and no longer tied to the latest set start or end date. This means that it is very important that all operators always set updated quantities. If an operator misses setting an updated quantity this will be shown as “missing data” within the approval process of the planner in the same way it is shown in the time-based tracking option.

NOTE: if a planner enters a task shopfloor total quantity bigger than the task quantity, on approval the task quantity will get the shopfloor total done quantity.

As you can see in the screenshot below, we also added the two new fields to the task tooltip, which can be selected in the ‘Customize Tooltips’ dialog.

Operator Client

We also added the new functionality to the Operator Client, of course. Once “Quantity-based” is selected in the settings, a new button will appear allowing you to set the new “Shopfloor Total Quantity”.

As usual, this will still require approval from a planner to trigger a rescheduling.

Small but meaningful:

In addition to the huge overhaul of the Execute Mode, we also added a couple of smaller changes:

1. A Planer can now finish a task as planned only with a right mouse click with the new item “Finish as Planned” added in the Context menu. This is functionally the same as going to the Execute Tab or opening the Operator Client and selecting “Finished as Planned”. This means that this still needs to be approved, but helps you clean up missing data a lot faster.
   
2. We have added a new Sales Field to Jobs, allowing you to quantify a Job's value to your company. This is currently only a new entry field, which of course can be uploaded. It is visualized in the reports, the tooltips and can be queried through the API.
3. We also extended the shopfloor report with all task values. This way you can build the export you need from all data available in jpi.