For any business, tracking starts behind four walls as raw materials come in, and finished goods go out. However, it is a complex process, and it needs a lot of accountability. Raw materials come from many geographical locations and in different modes of transport. In addition, for the finished goods, they have to reach multiple destinations within minimum time but safe and secure.
Any disruptions in either of the processes will put the company into a lot of hardship. It results in losing customers' trust and sales. Equally important is the WIP or work in progress processes of the unfinished goods. Therefore, to have the best WIP tracking is the need of the hour for many companies to reduce costly problems like losing orders, product recalls, incorrect assemblies, and also line downtime.
PM dispensing automation helps high volume production machines to automatically index, cut, and dispense bubble wrap materials in the packaging industry. The packaging materials are cut to set sheet lengths and dispense it on demand to place it directly into the boxes. It helps immensely to create uniformity between various product lines and also facilitates support and updates of machines in product life cycles.
WIP tracking or work in progress tracking software provides real-time production data. Since WIP involves raw materials, labor, overhead costs incurred for products in many stages of the production process, WIP tracking gains prominence. It is not only for manufacturing organizations but also for maintenance organizations as well. It will streamline the process, increases the accuracy of manufacturing and assembly, and provides 100 % traceability of all items, throughput, and productivity.
WIP tracking uses both barcodes and RFID tags for tracking the following among others
· Employees IDs & tasks
· Work orders
· Materials, tools & wastage
· Date & time for production and inventory
· Quality control data
· Production codes, numbers, & stations
· Size, quantity, and dimension
Benefits of WIP tracking
In both barcode and RFID tags, WIP tracking route materials through the production process to update manufacturing management systems and provide configuring instructions, among others. They also reduce human errors, increase accuracy, improve monitoring, and records real-time WIP. Now RFID or radio frequency identification is by far much better and widely used nowadays for many tracking purposes. The many benefits of WIP tracking include
· Time-efficient production
Since WIP tracking is to track, measure, and optimize, many companies improve the time efficiency of the production. It finds out the idle workers and the movement of outbound goods to improve their time efficiency.
· Saves shelf expiry
Many products remain too long on the shelves of the manufacturing unit, and it is the only WIP tracking which identifies the ones to expire soon and sent it first for delivery.
· Optimizes space
Tracks the unutilized space on the factory floor and enables optimization of the area in factories to save energy and increase production.
· Eliminates human errors
By performing profound quality checks all through the manufacturing process, it eliminates all types of human errors.
