Fighting with your work to list is a common sight that I (Giles) see all too often…

It is a bit like when you are driving your car and are using a sat nav system. You have programmed in your destination and you let the system generate an effective route.

You drive along the road and then decide you don’t like the route suggested. You override the instructions and two minutes later come to regret it.

This is especially the case if your sat nav is connected to the Internet and has real time traffic information. You often find yourself driving up a road the wrong way, get stuck in traffic or just realise that you don’t know better than the system.

In many ways, fighting your work to list is a similar issue. People decide they don’t like the sequence and override the list. For some short range optimisation issues this might make sense, but cherry picking the work to list is a recipe for disaster.

The sequence is there for a reason. In most cases it is to achieve an on-time delivery performance that is acceptable for your customers (ideally 100%!).

I have run a few factory operations and in most cases I have seen people tinkering with the schedule when I have taken them over. In one factory we had 9 schedules for one production flow! Admittedly it was a long process for bespoke heavy engineered parts, but it didn’t matter. When my team got onboard with the mantra ‘one factory one schedule’ our lead time dropped and our on time delivery performance soared.

Better than this, our profit margins went up, turnover grew (on the back of being a dependable supplier) and general hassles decreased. My working hours went down too!

This same story has repeated during my consulting projects too. Keep it simple, fix the work to list and then work the list. It doesn’t have to be more complicated than this.

The video below shows you how the work to list appears to the shop floor teams.

And, if you want to know how we re-schedule within Fraction ERP then check out this video walkthrough. This is vital to keep your work to list being effective.

If you want to learn more about Fraction ERP then sign up for a free demo using the form below. If you want to view more of our video walkthroughs, then check out our Vimeo page here.