With multiple presents to buy before Christmas day, it can be difficult to know where to start. Some people make paper checklists, some use their phones, others decide to do shopping online. No matter how you coordinate your present-buying process, you often end up in a mad rush when December comes. The paper list you made was nowhere to be seen when you actually needed it. Maybe your phone has died from too much scrolling whilst stood in shopping queues, made worse by the pandemic. You had ideas of what to buy for people months ago, but you forgot to bookmark some and others are out of stock!
We all know the expense of Christmas, but most of us do everything possible to minimise costs and get organised during the festive period. However, we can almost guarantee that you aren’t doing this as successfully in your factory checklists. You probably have hundreds of reasons for checklists both on the shop floor and in the office. Some are handy when getting a job done, but others are a requirement to ensure that you are conforming to standards, such as those laid out in the ISO 9001 accreditation. We all know that having an efficient way to capture data and produce audit trails will help us be more productive and reduce costs, as it helps us become more organised and reliable. But are we being as efficient as possible? Why don’t we take a look at a week in December.
2 weeks ’til Christmas
It’s two weeks before the man in red slides down your chimney. You’ve had a frantic weekend of Christmas shopping after all of the shops have reopened following England’s second lockdown. It’s safe to say that you feel anything but prepared for Christmas day! You enter the factory with high hopes that this feeling won’t be present (no pun intended) in your workplace. Your first job is to complete a return to work form for one of your Machine Operative employees. You jot some notes down in a word document and scan the employee’s doctor’s note in as evidence that they are well enough to work. After the meeting, you format the document, save the image and then input it into your document.
It’s now Tuesday, the day of your internal audit. It’s vital that it goes well because you’re suspecting an external audit is due soon. Despite this, you know that issues might arise, but it’s accurate documentation that will determine the audit’s success. You take on the role of documenting the audit, and spend most of your day jotting down notes as it’s taking place.
The following day, you sit in the office trying to decipher your rushed notes with difficulty. You spend several hours typing notes up. Then, you return to the shop floor to delegate tasks. There have been a few non-conformances that have arisen during the internal audit, so you make sure that these are prioritised. At the end of your shift, you head straight to the nearest retail park to continue with your Christmas shopping. A member of your family has asked for a certain “blue shirt with a pocket on it” for Christmas, but you have no picture of it and there are 14 blue shirts in the shop!
The following day quickly becomes a struggle. You head to the shop floor to catch up with your employees and learn that hardly anything has been actioned. The staff have read your report, but can’t make sense of it. The non-conformance procedure is still in its preliminary stages because they aren’t sure exactly which part of the machine is being referred to in your factory checklists. Oh no, this is reminding you of your nightmare Christmas shopping trip last night!
By Friday morning, you are feeling mentally exhausted. You still need to file away the COVID-19 Visitor Log for the week. However, the pages are nowhere to be seen when you arrive at the office. Not only have you got no evidence of documentation for the Government’s Track and Trace scheme, but you also have a GDPR issue to deal with. If anyone that has entered the factory tests positive, you have no way to contact other visitors. Whilst this is much more of a problem than your Christmas shopping dilemmas, you can’t help but think of the long-lost list that you wrote after a joint video call with family a couple of weeks back. If you hadn’t misplaced it, you’d know what to buy without as many problems!
Capture data using digital factory checklists
Unfortunately, Fitfactory can’t supply an army of Christmas elves to make your presents… However, we do produce software that will help you capture factory checklists digitally. We offer a simple system that can be integrated with your ERP/MRP software to eliminate all of the issues that you regularly experience with spreadsheets or paper-based forms. Our Data Capture module will replace fragmented processes whilst helping you to become fit for Industry 4.0.
Rather than relying on a manual template and lots of editing, simply fill out online factory checklists that enable you to upload photos as evidence. This will help you when completing return to work forms, visitor logs, and even internal audits. You’ll no longer have to worry about employees understanding your reports or manually delegating tasks. When you identify an issue, you can write a note, attach a photo of the problem and assign a corrective action right away, as you capture it. Your team will be able to easily identify the issue and work on the corrective action. You can streamline your NCR process in no time. You can monitor who is completing tasks on the dashboard. A full audit trail means that you will know exactly who has edited forms and when they did it.
It’s global news that touching items increases the risk of transmitting COVID-19. It seems ironic to make visitors sign in to aid traceability when they are using the same pen and paper as others. By using Data Capture, this process will become much smarter. Record details digitally, making them safer and your data more secure. Our system also enables you to share documents digitally, reducing cross-contamination and saving the trees.
Giving the gift of Data Capture
Why don’t you make your Christmas shopping your only chore this year by choosing Data Capture for your factory needs. Data Capture has reduced the time to capture information and identify problems by up to 48%. We love our platform, but our customer success rates prove why. Eliminate human error, minimise manual efforts and maximise your productivity with Data Capture. Interested in how to organise your factory for Christmas, or how to plan efficiently over the festive period? Take a look at our other Christmas blog posts.
For more information on Data Capture, get in touch with the team today. You’ll soon be asking us to make one to satisfy your Christmas shopping needs!