How 3 small changes in reporting saved 11 hours a week
Foremen at a metal processing plant near Tychy were losing nearly 37 minutes every morning entering the same data into three different paper sheets. Because of this, the first shift only reached full capacity at 6:42 AM instead of 6:10 AM, generating unnecessary downtime right at the start of the day. Changing the way scrap and breakdown data was collected allowed for reclaiming 11.5 man-hours across the work week.
A morning ritual with a pencil in hand
In October 2023, we visited a shop floor where 4 main CNC machines worked three shifts. Every foreman, upon arriving at work, had to fill out a machine work card, a shift log, and an HSE sheet. Everything happened on paper, at a small table next to a tool cabinet. Numbers don't lie if you know how to read them – and here, nobody was reading them because nobody had the time to transcribe 28 pages a day into the computer. Data about machine No. 2 stopping at 3:14 AM only reached the production manager on Friday afternoon.
The problem was that the shop floor must earn, not stand idle. When a foreman is busy with paperwork, he doesn't see that an operator at the third station is setting the cooling incorrectly. In one month, we counted 47 such minor incidents that resulted solely from supervision being occupied by bureaucracy. Each of these people spent an average of 187 minutes a week on mechanical form-filling that served no one in daily production management. It was a classic example of wasting the time of skilled workers.
Numbers don't lie if you know how to read them – and here, nobody was reading them because nobody had time to transcribe 28 pages a day.
One form instead of three tables
The first change was scrapping the paper logs and replacing them with a single, simple digital form on a tablet. We chose 3 dust-resistant Samsung devices, which cost a total of 2,450 PLN. Instead of writing by hand, the foreman now just clicks large buttons: 'Start', 'Stop', 'Breakdown'. The system is meant to make work easier, not add more clicking, so the form limits choices to a minimum. If a machine is down, the operator must choose one of the 5 most common breakdown reasons, which takes exactly 3.2 seconds.
Thanks to this, there is no more manual data transcription. Information about machine No. 3 downtime at 9:15 AM immediately appears on the screen in the technologist's office. There's no need to wait for the end of the shift or the Friday report. Implementing this one change reduced reporting time from 37 minutes to less than 9 minutes per day per person. Over 5 working days for the entire supervisory team, this saved 6 hours that previously literally ended up in a binder no one ever looked at.
The system should make work easier, not add more clicking.
Numbers visible immediately on the floor
The second step was installing a 55-inch TV above the shop floor exit. We now display a simple graph there: how many units we planned to make by 10:00 AM versus how many actually came off the line. This isn't complex analytics, just three simple numbers. When employees see they are at 83% of the plan instead of the assumed 94%, they start reacting themselves before the manager even enters the floor. This eliminated 'dead hours' when everyone was waiting for instructions, not knowing if they were on schedule.
Implementing this view took us 4 business days, including SQL database configuration. The result was that the scrap rate on machine No. 2 dropped by 14% in the first week of the screen's operation. People simply started monitoring parameters because they saw the result of their work in real-time. Previously, they would only find out about errors after quality control, which happens every 24 hours. Here, information about a defective batch reached them 11 minutes after the first sizing error occurred.
Tangible effects in the wallet
The third change was the automatic generation of reports for the maintenance department. Previously, mechanics found out about faults from a foreman's shout or a note left on a desk. Now, when a machine is down for more than 15 minutes, the system automatically sends a notification to the mechanic's phone. This reduced reaction time to breakdowns by 23%. Instead of searching for the foreman across the whole floor, the mechanic goes straight to the correct machine with the right set of tools, because he sees the error code in the notification.
In summary, these 3 small changes freed up 11.5 hours a week for the foremen. What did they do with that time? They went back to what they are paid for – supervising technology and training younger operators. The shop floor must earn, not stand idle, and those freed-up hours translated into an additional 156 machine man-hours per quarter. Without buying new machines or hiring more people, we simply made better use of the resources the company already owned since 2018.
The shop floor must earn, not stand idle.
