After many years of consideration, we determined it was the right time to move our shop workers into personal digital devices and start "working smarter." The initial desire was to have workers get rid of the old, antiquated paper time card system and move to a better digital solution. What evolved was a very powerful personal digital device that shares a wealth of information internally and externally. Some highlights include:
1. Picture Vault. Operators have the ability to take pictures of a customer's project during various phases of production and easily upload those pictures for sharing with the customer via our website.
2. Time cards. We no longer fill out paper time cards or punch a clock. Workers are able to apply time automatically to orders and machines with a simple click of the button. All of the time is automatically tied into our job costing and payroll system avoiding double entry and extra handling of paper time cards.
3. Daily and Weekly Schedules are now available for all workers on their personal device, instead of being on a central computer that all workers had to walk to.
4. MTR's are now available for workers to review for all jobs that require heat numbers to be verified and transferred.
5. Internet allows workers to access our Bending Calculators page and use our powerful bending calculators to help with daily math.
6. Email is available to certain workers that have Albina email accounts to allow for documented communication between workers.
7. Scientific calculators are available to all workers.
8. Access to Albina's vast library of tooling.
9. Access to saved production notes for repeat parts.
10. Access to setup pictures that can be zoomed to get a detailed view of what is required.
11. Ability to preview a work order without tracking down printed paperwork.
12. Access to a company wide vacation schedule so workers know when vacation time is coming up and when vacation time is available.
13. Ability to preview a purchase order and receive a purchase order.
14. Ability to update job status and mark when parts are complete in real time.
15. Performance Review. Each worker has the ability to review production productivity and production efficiency percentages weekly, monthly and annually.These personal digital devices have become very powerful tools for our workers and certainly help with efficiency. We continue to strive to be an industry leader with innovative, "out of the box thinking."