In 1985, we were a typical job shop in many ways. We existed with no visual growth over the previous three years. We were frustrated and we knew we had to do something about it. Our order system was not much better than a yellow legal pad with order entry done manually and sometimes by typewriter.

We did not know where the jobs were in our plant. When someone phoned and asked about delivery, we were unable to tell them without going to the shop and looking for the job. We would have to guess how long it might take to complete it. Sometimes, two "hot" jobs were scheduled for the same machine at the same time. If a router sheet was lost, it was a real problem. We had no way of quickly retrieving the processing and production data.

Jim Vancalbergh, our president, recognized a year earlier that without better organization there could be no expansion for our company. He purchased a Commodore computer and started to develop production sheets. These sheets were filled out manually by the shop personnel and turned in every day. At the end of each day we recorded the information and figured out production averages. Lost production sheets or routing sheets could be reproduced easily because they were now stored in the computer.

The Solution

About six months later, while at a Detroit-area tool show, one of our managers reported that he had seen a real-time job tracking system that looked promising. A real-time system, being a dynamic control process, responds to events as they occur. This control technique has worked well in the process industries. The question was whether such an approach could work in the batch-type processing environment typically used by the metalworking job shop industry. Neither Jim nor I had a chance to see the system that was displayed, so we asked the company for a demonstration.

Steve Ingraham, then president and co-founder of Mindbridge Systems, Inc., of Beaumont, Texas, made a quick trip to our plant to demonstrate his firm's Realtrac system. We were intrigued by the fact that he was also the owner of a job shop.

His shop had scheduling and job tracking problems similar to ours, but one of his solutions was different. Where we tried to employ the power of a small computer, he called in two process control engineer friends and, together, they devised a real-time management control system for a job shop.

Ordering The System

We had already decided a change was necessary. Also, the ideas of what we wanted to do were clear, so we ordered a system the next day.

When we first received the system, we had 20 employees and a 5,000 square foot production facility. Today, we have 48 employees and 15,000 square feet, with one person monitoring the real-time system. At one point, we had two plants six miles apart. Both were monitored by one person.

Our company serves the automotive, hydraulic cylinder, and industrial shock absorber markets, and performs saw work for other job shops serving the same industries. In 1985, sales were $1.2 million. In 1989, sales were over $3 million, and we project an increase of 15 to 20 percent for 1990. We attribute much of our growth to the real-time job tracking and scheduling system because it enabled us to exercise better shop floor control.

Our shop specializes in production sawing and machining operations. We have eight CNC turning centers, four CNC machining centers, and four production cutoff saws, including one cold saw and three band saws.

Last year, we ran approximately 2700 jobs through our shop, in quantities ranging between one and thousands of pieces per job. The average lot was between 100 and 200 pieces. At any time, there are between 350 and 400 jobs going through the system, with an average of ten operations per job.

We can track each job from the time it is entered until it is shipped out the door, and we know, within seconds, the location and status of any job. This is possible because the real-time system captures and processes information so quickly.

The basic system network consists of a personal computer master console, a dedicated special-events printer, communication boxes that can access up to 64 micro-terminals, and software. We installed five micro-terminals throughout our shop at machines or workcenters where the shop personnel enter data into the system manually or by bar code reader. We have four IBM-compatible personal computers networked with the host computer. The PC.

The system's data collection clock is always running. The importance of this feature becomes evident when viewing a computer or monitor screen that is displaying estimated production time versus actual production time. The estimated time remains the same, but the job time display is updated every minute, and the system's monitor display is refreshed every 15 seconds, 24 hours a day.

As a machine operator logs on at a workstation micro-terminal to do a job, the entry information is recorded almost instantly at the master terminal. As each operator logs on and logs off, a database is created for determining where the production bottlenecks are, if there are problems at particular machines, who is doing each job, and where each job is being done.