Job Shop Tracking Software
Job tracking software performs the most complicated and critical tasks for the job shop manufacturer. A job shop might have limited resources that need to perform multiple tasks in a timely, cost effective manner. Without the ability to track, measure and manager the cradle to shipment processes for your jobs they are likely to become lost in the shuffle in the ever changing day to day activities. With such demands as these tracking jobs using software designed for jobs shops is necessary.
Many times job shops have a variety of products being produced, multi-level BOMs (Bill of Materials), a simple one-off production run or processing sales orders from made-to-stock items for distribution. The true nature of a job shop means there is a variety of manufacturing happening and all those different business process comes varying needs.
Job shop tracking software should be able to handle split shipments, single shipments or a blanket order with multiple shipment dates. Knowing the status of a particular job and its associated shipments in real time 
should be easy to locate and visually represented to the user, without having to search multiple modules.
Job tracking software enables the manufacturer to track every transaction that happens against a particular order within it’s manufacturing process. If the transaction comes from purchasing for raw material or outside services, the cost should automatically be logged against the job in real-time along with all labor, burden and over-head. Smart job tracking software provides all the necessary tools for manufacturing companies, big or small, to schedule and track all items associated with a job from the time the job is quoted until it’s shipped out the door and the invoice is paid.
This real-time transaction reporting, also known as Activity Based Costing, should simultaneously happen when costs change and edits occur across the organization, that is the main reason to implement job shop tracking software. Day to day activity changes like the Accounts Payable person entering a payable invoice for a purchase order linked to a job, or material is late, or if an employee’s timecard hours have changed. Management needs to know this in real-time so informed decisions can be made regarding the current shop floor schedule, notifying customers with real-time status of their order and keeping costs to their minimum. All of the mentioned functionality and more can be found in thoughtfully planned job shop tracking software that was designed and developed with the manufacturers expert input.
In today’s manufacturing environment technology should aide in easily capturing data and reporting back transactional statistics; this is typically done using bar code technology and analytical reporting. Intuitive tracking software equips management with the tools to track bottle necks, work flow inefficiencies, late jobs, and cost overruns as they are entered against a job.
Although we’ve outlined job shop tracking software, job tracking software built for manufacturing has the ability to cover all types of manufacturing environments. In more recent years the face of manufacturing has changed, this evolution of the globalization of manufacturing has demanded that software providers broaden their functionality with regards to their shop tracking software.
With several job shop tracking software solutions available to the manufacturer what should one look for?
- Ideally the software should be easy to use.Ease of use has a direct affect on whether your organization will complete an implementation and it will be a deciding factor in its adoption by other users in your organization.
- Customization and flexibility to your business process is a definite must.Job shop tracking software should accommodate your business processes out of the box.
- Hopefully it will be a completely integrated system, after all, isn’t that the purpose of using job shop scheduling software?
