What is manufacturing workflow management?
Manufacturing workflow management helps manufacturing companies remain competitive, productive and efficient. Digitalize your workflows and:
Take control. By leveraging digital project management practices, you can centralize operations, streamline processes and maintain visibility into what’s working — and what needs to improve.
Keep it simple. Managing workflows digitally allows you to simplify and scale processes, so you can achieve more with less.
Boost productivity. When you digitalize workflows, you automate many administrative, repetitive tasks. This helps you and your team focus your efforts where they count, increasing overall efficiency and productivity.
When to use your manufacturing workflow management template?
Let’s say you’ve been tasked with implementing a new manufacturing process. Your goal is to create a structured and sequential framework that ensures the new process is seamlessly implemented and delivers better outcomes.
Use your template to break down this larger project into more manageable tasks and align all stakeholders around the common goals of the project. Here’s how you can use the template to achieve the best possible results.
Plan the full scope of the project. From start to finish, the template is designed to help you visualize the full scope of the project. You can list all the key project milestones so that all team members understand the objectives, milestones and timelines.
Allocate resources effectively. Introducing a new manufacturing process will have many tasks and moving parts. You only have so many available resources to make sure the project goes smoothly. Use your template to assign resources to each task and set task priorities to keep the full project on the planned timeline.
Establish efficient processes and ensure better outcomes. The template gives you an easy and efficient way to track all your assigned tasks. Having a centralized project board gives you real-time status updates on the full scope of the project. This way, you can proactively adjust your project plan if certain tasks fall behind and reassign resources to keep the final deadline in sight.
Your manufacturing workflow template is designed to help you manage all key phases of a manufacturing process. Use this resource to track all your tasks, set priorities and manage workflows — ensuring productivity, quality of work and on-time deliverables.
How to use your manufacturing workflow management template
As a manufacturing workflow manager, your master goals are to optimize operational efficiencies, manage workflow transparency and improve worker accountability. Here’s how you can use your manufacturing workflow management template to digitize project management, reduce operating costs and improve productivity.
Step 1: Create tasks in each section
Treat each section in the template as a unique stage in the manufacturing process: planning, pre-production, production, quality control and post-production.
You can edit the existing tasks, or create a new task by clicking the + in any section of your project board. Be sure to add a detailed task description, including the scope and requirements of the task. This ensures stakeholders understand and are aligned on the task deliverables.
Step 2: Add tags to indicate priority
As you create tasks, you can use tags to organize tasks in order of priority. For example, if you’re implementing a new piece of manufacturing equipment, a task to calibrate that equipment is a critical milestone. Create a high-priority tag for that task so that the assignee treats this task as a top priority.
Step 3: Create checklists to simplify complex tasks
Any effort to optimize manufacturing processes will have many tasks and moving pieces. Procuring, calibrating, testing and deploying new equipment, plus training workers to safely use the new equipment — all must be completed for the project to be a success.
Use your project board to create descriptive checklists and simplify complex tasks. The more context you can give team members, the more likely the tasks will be completed as expected.
Step 4: Create your task management timeline
Once you’ve set the expectations and priorities, you can use your template’s built-in project timeline feature to visually display the optimized project workflow. Click the “Show project timeline” option at the top of your project board to activate the Gantt chart feature.
Drag each of your tasks from your project board onto the project timeline and horizontally assign the appropriate start and end dates. This will create a visual overview of the full manufacturing workflow optimization process. It allows workers and other project stakeholders to see the full project scope and work towards target milestones.
Step 5: Monitor status updates and keep task workflows moving
Use the Reports feature of your workflow optimization template to evaluate project performance. You can view how many tasks were completed on time and on budget, as well as compare where there were gaps in the intended workflow. Reports helps you honestly evaluate project performance so that you can make improvements to better optimize future projects in the pipeline.
