Production floor execution interface features in Dynamics 365 for Supply Chain Management

Manufacturing has become more and more sophisticated over the years. With the evolution of the production landscape, it has become evident that the manufacturers that develop the most updated business optimization strategies are the most successful. Ensuring that the production floor management is up to date is imperative. Organizations that employ proper shop floor management experience less problems and increased efficiency.

This is why manufacturers should use Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Supply Chain Management because Dynamics 365 has a production floor execution interface that will prove very valuable for efficient workflows. This blog will describe an overview of this interface and the features that come with it.

Overview

Shop floor workers use the production floor execution interface to register their daily work, such as when they start a job, report feedback about jobs, register indirect activities, and report absence. These registrations are the basis for tracking progress and cost on production orders, and for calculating the basis for the workers’ pay.

When you open the production floor execution interface, it automatically loads a selected configuration and job filter that are specific to the browser and device. In the configuration, you set the policies that must be applicable for a specific usage. Here are some usage examples:

• On a device in the company hall, employees clock in when they come into the office, and they clock out when they leave for the day.
• On a device on the shop floor, machine operators register when they start and complete jobs. They also register breaks and indirect activities.

Additional features

The production floor execution interface itself, plus several of the optional settings that are described in this topic, must be turned on in your system before you can use them.

Besides the production floor execution interface itself, here are some additional features of the production floor execution interface:

• Generate license plates
• Print labels
• Allow locking the touch screen
  • This feature makes it possible to allow workers to lock the touchscreen so that they can sanitize it.
• Asset management functionality for the production floor execution interface
  • This feature adds an asset management tab to the production floor execution interface. Workers can use this tab to select an asset that is connected to a machine resource that is within the selected filter of the job list
• Enable job search
  • This feature makes it possible to add a search field to the jobs list. Workers can find a specific job by entering the job ID or find all jobs for a specific order by entering the order ID. Workers can enter the ID by using a keypad or by scanning a bar code.
• Enable the display of full serial, batch, and license plate numbers
  • This feature provides an improved experience for viewing lists of serial, batch, and license plate numbers in the production floor execution interface. The display changes from a card view that shows a limited number of characters to a list view that provides enough space to show the full values. The list also provides the ability to search for specific numbers.
• Enable registering of material consumption
  • This feature enables workers to use the production floor execution interface to register material consumption, batch numbers, and serial numbers. Some manufacturers, especially those in the process industries, must explicitly register the amount of material that is consumed for each batch or production order.
• Enable reporting on catch weight items
  • Workers can use the production floor execution interface to report progress on batch orders for catch weight items. Batch orders are created from formulas, which can be defined to have catch weight items as formula items, co-products, and by-products. A formula can also be defined to have formula lines for ingredients that are defined for catch weight. Catch weight items use two units of measure to track inventory: catch weight quantity and inventory quantity.
• Enable the “My day” dialog
  • The My day dialog provides workers with an overview of their daily registrations and current balances for paid time, paid overtime, absence, and paid absence.
• Enable teams
  • When multiple workers are assigned to the same production job, they can form a team. The team can nominate one worker as a pilot. The remaining workers then automatically become assistants of that pilot. For the resulting team, only the pilot must register job status. Time records apply to all team members.
• Enable additional configuration in the production floor execution interface
  • This feature adds settings for the following functionality to the Configure production floor execution page:
  • Automatically open the Start job dialog box when a search is completed.
  • Automatically open the Report progress dialog box when a search is completed.
  • Pre-fill the remaining quantity in the Report progress dialog box.
  • Enable searches by project ID.