Zeiterfassung und – Auswertung mit infoBoard

Zeiterfassung und – Auswertung mit infoBoard

Vor 10 Jahren habe ich auf einer Deutschen Messe mit einem Mitarbeiter eines Maschinenherstellers über Maschinendaten-Auswertung gesprochen.

Ich verstand augenblicklich, dass seine Balkengraphiken nur eine Darstellung des Istzustands und der Historie von Fakten war. Dagegen ist infoBoard eine Darstellung und insofern vage Vorstellung, was in der Zukunft passieren soll. Hier Flexibilität, dort unveränderliche Daten.

Deswegen ist die Zeiterfassung der Anwesenheit und eine Mitarbeiterbezogene Zeiterfassung auf seine Aufgaben in der Vergangenheit immer nur eine Ergänzung zur Planung gewesen. Einige möchten auch nur eine nachträgliche Projektzeiterfassung durch den Mitarbeiter, hauptsächlich um den Kunden korrekte Rechnungen stellen zu können.

Nun ist bei infoBoard durch verschiedene Kundenprojekte eine n e u e Zeit angebrochen: das infoBoard Zeitmanagement. Und in top: die Verlagerung der Verantwortung auf den Mitarbeiter für seine Arbeitszeit. *)

Durch diese Verknüpfung wird die Revolution durch Digitalisierung auf dem Arbeitsmarkt weiter vorangetrieben. Ich bin dafür, dass sich Mitarbeiter positiv entwickeln und ihre Wertschöpfung für das Unternehmen erhöhen, um aus diesem Grund ihren Lebensstandard erhöhen zu können. Der Mitarbeiter sollte gerne auch belohnt und nicht nur entlohnt werden.

Über diese Decade der Softwareentwicklung landen wir also bei InfoBoard WorkingSchedule, der Arbeitsplan https://infoboard.app/funktionen Der Mitarbeiter sieht seine Stempelzeiten und die geplanten betrieblichen Aufgaben und arbeitet diese ab. Oder trägt sie auf den nächsten Tag vor. Er erfasst live seine Zeiten auf Aufgaben oder zu einem späteren Zeitpunkt seine Projektzeiten. Alles auf seiner eigenen Oberfläche.

Er sieht Statistiken zu Urlaub und Überstunden, kontrolliert seine Arbeitszeit selber, druckt seinen Stundenzettel aus, unterschreibt diesen und legt ihn seinem Arbeitgeber vor.

Das ist doch schon mal ein Anfang in der neuen Zeit!

Im Tagesgeschäft ist für das Unternehmen das übliche möglich: Buchen der Stempelzeiten, Nachkalkulation der Aufträge. Korrektur  von falschen oder fehlenden Zeiten.

Eine besondere (Weiter-)Entwicklung hat in den letzten Monaten stattgefunden: auf mehrdimensionalen Planungsobjekten buchen Mitarbeiter jetzt einzeln ihre Arbeitszeiten. Der Planer kann bei starkem Auseinanderfallen der Gruppenarbeit leicht die mehrdimensionalen Objekte in einzelne Aufgaben auflösen und exakter planen. Je stärker Planung und Fakten in der Gegenwart (infoBoard Tagesstrich) zusammenlaufen, desto detaillierter werden die Daten, die zu verarbeiten sind.

All diese Erkenntnisse führen uns bei infoBoard zu neuen Produktstrategien und Entwicklungen, die wir in diesem Jahr des neuen infoBoard ZeitmanagementsZeiterfassung und -Auswertung mit infoBoard noch vorstellen werden.

infoBoard im Werkzeugbau in Thailand

InfoBoard in tool making in Thailand

 

In one of the many industrial areas around Bangkok there is a group of employees responsible for the toolmaking of a japanese company, who is in need of a……yes, a planning tool just like infoBoard. Not even the japanese headquarter can help in this difficult situation. The group has to hope that infoBoard International Co. Ltd. is somewhere close.

The online presentation can be difficult to manage: a Teamviewer presentation means I hear questions coming from the computer but I have to answer in the phone receiver. The demo version always convinces everyone very fast and it often happens that employees come to me and confess to have already read through and to have studied the handbook two times.

Despite their personal preparation, the software is ordered short after and a training course in loco is immediately arranged.

InfoBoard International is conveniently located in the immediate proximity of the international airport and of the highways to north, south, east and west.

Everyone arrives fast and without risks to the office, wether you come from the city or from the countryside, because the airport is always well signposted. But the opposite situation can happen and I think it is so amusing to tell your friends and family, when you are back home, about how chaotic and messy the local traffic abroad was and how you had to fight against it .

To get to the clients it took around 100 km of travelling and from km “9” you just had to keep going straight ahead. On the first day I made a mistake. For starters the direction to take was Bangkok City instead of North. It took me 20 minutes to finally find a U-turn, turn around so that I could continue in direction north. I had to pay two road tolls. The first time I took the highway  “1” which was the wrong highway, and the second time, obviously, I went past the destination; there was no highway exit. At this point, like a satellite, I did a first U-turn, turned the car around, then did another U-turn in the other direction, completing a 360 degrees turn. This time I finally managed to leave the highway and get to an industrial area which unfourtanetely wasn’t the one I had to get to; I had been requested to go to the one after.

At the Seven Eleven I met in time with my employee and the interpreter. I updated them fast and told them that my navigation system interpreted numbers differently from what they really were. I didn’t have a precision landing!

Friendly welcome, people spoke Thai, Japanese and then English. We went through  the entire production facility and we were positively surprised: all neat and clean. Accurate labeling of the machinery and with notes (in English!).

Now to the tool making: it is known that production facilities in the USA are clean and tidy. Clients’ names like Panasonic give the idea that there money is earned and riinvested in a clear way.

After visiting the machinery room, we saw on the display panel a fully established infoBoard. Attention had been payed to all details to prepare everything meticulously .

The next 2 training days went by. The English-Thai translation came along smoothly until we tried to explain something in Thai to a japanese employee. I took the deal in my own hands and mimed things using fingers and the mouse and without speaking English, despite all diffculties I think we managed to understand eachother.

I also showed how InfoBoard could be used in the production of machinery for injection moulding. It was our “passport” to Japan. The training brought an end to the IT department of the SAP interface and also ended technical approaches to infoBoard.

We said good bye with the conviction that, that company would earn more money with infoBoard and we were eager to see how the SAP interface would be implemented.

The morning after I suffered from another detour to the “absolutely  close” airport because I looked at the navigation system and not at the signs. Luckily on Saturday mornings the roads are normally empty and it didn’t take a lot of time.

I hope our infoboard platform-designer will be accepted in the universities of Thailand as a teaching tool. In Germany the universities are still fundend by the governement with the so called third-party-funds to keep production plans secret . Michel wake up! Germany has already what people can understand and manage!

In any case, in a japanese company in Thailand employees now understand 55.000 times faster how to make better planning decisions. With Infoboard.

infoBoard in Birmingham

infoBoard in Birmingham

Our product is mainly used in England’s north industrial area. A direct flight connection between Hamburg and Birmingham helps when you want to meet with your clients or train them.

After landing we remembered what happened the time before: because of the many roundabouts the dated navigation system we had was too slow to tell us in time what exit to take. With a modern navigation system things would have gone differently.

The second challenge were the elongated highway exits, the reason why we often turned too late and we had to take roundabouts.Third challenge was the fact that for some roads you have to pay fees, for Germans this is very unusual. Actually, hired cars have in most cases a badge, but when you have to correctly join the queu of the toll, you panick.  Do we have what the sign shows or do we have to go to the cash sign?

Oh yes, coming from the left, this is the reason why I bent over to look at the main road, I heared a clear “Left!” coming from the left passenger seat. It’s a peculiar memory especially because there were no vehicles to be seen.

We drove through Walsall. Narrow roads, evening rush hour traffic. The roads winded their way through hilly turns on the right and left. Suddendly we ended up at a crossroads and the navigation system stated that we had reached the destination, athough we had not. Suddendly I remembered that the navigation system didn’t know the exact address, I had used until that moment Google Maps to at least end up close to the destination.

Well, for starters we made the wrong decision to take the longest way through long detours, dead ends and so on. This is the reason why we returned to the crossingroads 10 minutes later and this time we turned in the road that finally brought us to the industrial area where our client had his office.

After the friendly welcome we walked through the big, modern hallways with many infoBoard monitors and infoBoard production time tracking touchscreens. Since the company had worked in the past with many very broad platforms, the company’s members didn’t want to accept anything different from what had worked so well for them for decades. After finding infoBoard on Internet the IT department was able to start it fast. Everybody had a familiar picture infront of them, only now in a digital version and this means with many advantages regarding the distribution of information and time tracking including notifications.

The client is a service provider for control cabinets cabling and is interested in deadline reliability. Each production island manufactures for one client with an outsourcing contract. There aren’t any single products in the portfolio. And well, the company after a powerful growth with bigger hallway enlargements considered inevitable a digitization of the analog platforms.

infoBoard was the last missing piece for a software-aided support of the production

Perfect!

infoBoard an der Westküste USA

infoBoard on the west coast of the USA

It’s hot, it’s cold. For a german man from the north like me the weather here is very different from what I am used to; here, outdoor it’s too hot while indoor too cold.

During the days of the fair we stayed in an accomodation in Koreatown (L.A). It was near the Convention Center and not far from West Hollywood with the famous stops that we had already visisted several times throughout the years.

Our hotel didin’t provide breakfast and in Koreatown there were only privately  owned shops, for this reason we drove to Downtown to have breakfast there.  Finding a parking spot was a big challenge since the price to leave tha car just  for 12 minutes was 3,50$ . At the end we found a small Austrian restaurant called FoodLab and on the terrasse on the back of its building we could enjoy a lovely cozy breakfast with real bread!

Really important and dinamic economic sectors have developped in Calfornia. The secret is: a big amount of capital that is in search for profits. Therefore were established industries that we in Germany had established time before through capital, for example the development of the diesel engine and the creation of airships.

As I imagined I was also contacted from an investment company. They were searching scalable business models. Millions have to be put at stake, otherwise it’s not interesting. I was asked how infoBoard’s exhibitor in the fair was different from the other exhibitors that also offered a planning software. After I looked up our US rival, of which I still didn’t know much: form-based data capturing system and analysing system with charts for projects. Just another project plannning tool with the number 987. Well, America needs infoBoard because we offer a planning interface that is source-oriented and can intuitively be used thanks to its graphic.

At the fair there were a lot of machine producers. The first impression that I had, is that in comparison with German fairs the technology used here is not very modern.The fairs in Hannover, Frankfurt and Düsseldorf look more glamorous.

Here come the potential clients: remain still, look, ask. Some explain infoBoard to their colleagues. We listen to them and we are surprised; how can someone think to know everything from just some images on a monitor?

Many visitors were job hoppers and they always had in mind a company that needed infoBoard, but where they didn’t not work anymore. Surprisingly a continuous change of employer brings the job hoppers to have a lot of experience with ERP implementations and software development and many said that they then knew that software developers didn’have professional experience and that for years they had to tell the developers what the program should do and that what they said was never done. Ok, I also think it is like that but the situation is going to change when infoBoard is installed. InfoBoard has benne completed and it’s the result of 20.000 developers’ team work.

Two men arrive and unfourtanetely from all it had been said I understood only the words “State, California, Cluster”. Later I took a look at their visitng card and it said “Baja California”, meaning they came from the mexican part. It’s a pity because I was looking forward to introducing them to our spanish co-workers that were standing just 1 m. away.

Other two men arrive and one of them talks in German. We probably already met at the same fair two years ago. After we talked a little about if we could present infoBoard like this  to the owner of the company on Thursday, we came to the conclusion that we should and we decided to exchange other information or oganise other appointments using my german telephone. It’s strange how we could call without problems but when we wanted to send text messages using an iPhone with the adress of the company, the texts would arrive two days after when I was at the airport. Technology is so strange at times!

On Wednesday we went out to have dinner with the company owner and the general manager. We talked about the very interesting story of the last 50 years of the compan, about  how good german education is and the chance to enter successfully the US market. The day after was the presentation of the managers and project managers out of the 400 people in the company. After an hour and a half of infoBoard’s demonstration everbody understood how useful infoBoard was since we assured short-time procedures in the machine shop of the producer.

I now understand better what Germany’s economy needs in order to improve. Banks can no more provide through Basel III the economy with enough money and there aren’t enough investors anymore. Fortunately the first small improvements are occuring in Germany and in the EU. It’s difficult for a normal person who has so many expenses to pay, to be able to save during just one life a personal capital to reinvest.

 

(Deutsch) Der Wunsch, alles ganz einfach zu haben

The desire of having it all and easily

The visualization of complex planning schemes is already an academic field and expert discipline.

In this post I would like to talk about the reaction that people who manage a type of production characterised by complex procedures have towards infoBoard’s visualization. The situation will be clearer with an example: let’s take a car. Buyers are usually not very interested in the technology used inside but rather in the services that the car offers and in its comfort; it must be comfortable and simple. Also potential infoBoard buyers want to see services and comfort but not in a general description, they prefer to see its complex, often customized resources and examples. The infoBoard newcomer has to render during this dialogue hipothetical big transfer payments to adapt to the forming image to the production fast and to also match it with their personal goals.

Small interruption to tell about the exact opposite experience: a swiss company has all its orders in a tangled MS project. All tasks of all orders had been  catalogued under 45 precise and familiar names until year 2021 on our new infoBoard Project Konverter. The newcomer after just 30 seconds can see the result all at once, correctly finished and correctly represented. More than 600 working processes use arrows to show how they are connected to eachother. Do you think that now it is more comprehensible? It is diffcult to represent this because of the great amount of information. Is this the “overview?” (I wondered how far the tasks were from their optimal status. I already considered (had caught) the ERP systems as bad sequence handlers and so now also bad project data handlers.

But let’s go back to the complex production sequences. These are firstly the many constraints that in the USA are known as dynamic scheduling. We set up infoBoard for example fast with sample orders so that it also looks like a “dynamic schedule”. Everything through shift operations? Yes, it looks like it. Now the newcomer is nervous: is there a way to show it in an easier way? Yes, the best way is using the Webapp infoBoard Workbench.

Here we design optimized simple two-dimensional bars side by side and one beneath the other. It took us one year to achieve what we really wanted to acomplish. The implementation  developped in 6 weeks.

What does this point of view determine ? It determines how many orders are being processed simultaneously and how big are the time gaps between them (number of rows, number of bars behind and between them). An evaluation of the planning does not folllow (a comparison between net working time and processing time like in the BusinessController value stream mapping and order overview) or a traffic lights- evaluation as a reply to the CCPM question (close to the delivery date or enough puffer for the delivery date? BusinessController application CCPM-Dashboard) is still missing. Nobody can think of something more modern than infoBoard. The opinion of the most newcomers is still that you have to see to understand and to then formulate an opinion  (always also formulate the matter of that opinion), to control the result. People are used to use excel to look through a file and check everything is in order and make sure one more time that everything is correct. We live in a “Post Excel” and “Post PowerPoint” era. We are actively forming the present and future of  modern, digitalised production managers (Operational Officer).

2017: Back to the roots

2017: Back to the roots

 

At the beginning of the year in companies new projects are set off and projects that haven’t been finished after a first, second and third attempt are freshly tackled. Every year companies come to us, after their ERP manufacturer has provided them with a not easy-to-use, flexible graphical planning surface. They did although promise that “The new version will be something completely new”.

And those responsible for the planning boards turn to infoBoard although they have agreed with their colleagues to rely on simple Excel overviews. There is a lack of multi-user capacity, different access rights (writing, reading), and mobile access.

And so we come back to the primal basic need of visualization and representation of the most important information in a department or small business.

Images: the most important thing about our appointment calendar are the images of the parts to be constructed. In the calendar we want to link the image to the drawings and the project folder so that the sales department should be able to get access to the appointment calendar also from mobile devices.

Or: our customer expects to see on his/her next visit, a graphical planning board to be able to evaluate its utilization.

Or: my supply companies cannot cope with the many opportunities we give you. They simply lack of a general insight!

Does infoBoard provide too many functions for these simple requirements?

Well, you can make your planning board in just 3 minutes. That does not sound like too much functionality. Often a 2-hour webinar is enough time to talk about everything we have to talk about. Is it really bad when a program has drafts? Isn’t it a kind of insurance that it can take all future requirements or other departments with their different needs to the same planning tool?

From my many years of experience with large companies I have learned how the planning needs and requirements vary according to the different tasks of the different departments. But our clients are lucky enough to have a general scheduling tool available.

The use of infoBoard planning board software enables a scaling of the services. What is a scaling? The possibility to do more with the same amount of resources.

Or: you can easily start in a department and when it’s necessary other complex processes in other departments will also be provided with the same planning support.

More on this topic in the next blog post.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

International application for assembly

International application for assembly

Planning tasks have different conditions for every application area, leading to a faster processing of bottlenecks thanks to a higher utilization.Typical bottlenecks result from holidays and illness or from a lack of properly qualified employees for a specific department. The international application is accompanied by travel readiness, valid VISA, tax liabilities due to long stays abroad, vaccinations, speaking abilities/translations… If necessary, also customs regulations, arrival and departure times, recording related work at the destination, foreign public holidays/plant closures, limited availability of adhoc required tools and materials.

Furthermore, the tour planning is optimized in order to achieve a favorable route through several successive missions. Sufficient time reserves when changing trains vs. too long stays at the airport.

Booking avoidance in no go areas for the accommodation planning, having short distances from the location of the application, or even getting a vehicle with driver. Overall, the often insufficient transportation, unreliability, safety for our technician (I think of the deadly taxi ride in Rio by a German Olympic coach). For us unfamiliar intransparence about prices and / or negotiation over a price before start.

Behavior in other religious cultures. Timely planning due to family members.

The most important thing: the entire time zone problem with reachability to the center, the jet lag (flying to the east is more difficult than flying to the west). Information about changes of dates and routes of the person who flies and the contact person on site.

Die Unterkunftsplanung, um kurze Wege zum Einsatz vor Ort zu haben, nicht in no go areas zu buchen, ggf. ein Fahrzeug mit Fahrer zu besorgen. Insgesamt ist die oft unzureichende Transportmöglichkeit, Unzuverlässigkeit, Sicherheit für unseren Techniker (ich denke an die tödliche Taxifahrt in Rio von einem deutschen Olympia Trainer). Für uns ungewohnte Intransparenz über Preise bzw. Verhandlung über einen Preis vor Antritt.

The accommodation arrangement, that aims to offer shortcuts to use onsite, makes sure you don’t book in no-go-areas and it helps you to get a vehicle with driver. Our technicians often have to face inadequate means of transportation, unreliability, unsafety situations (I’m thinking about the deadly taxi ride for a German Olympic coach in Rio). For us it’s very unusual to find intransparency about prices or to negociate over a price before the start of a journey.

So that are my own experiences of deployment planning in Arabia, Asia, Australia and Oceania, North and South America.

From our customers I know that infoBoard is used both centrally with a planning board, but also decentrally on several planning boards. That is when the resources are not only distributed, but also separated by subject area. But in special cases also exchange staff. One of our customers schedules 380 planners for 800 installers worldwide for plants in 180 countries.

Internationalen Einsatz von Monteuren planen mit infoBoard

Plan fitters of international application with infoBoard

But a number of people are already planning on a planning boardl: the same resources for local processing in the workshop, but also for assembly work abroad. Two planners can view the “your” personnel tasks separately on the same planning board via the infoBoard object filter.

How to implement infoBoard in a globally distributed organization? That was the question I was asked recently.

The software is international: from Christchurch to Melbourne and Perth Australia, through China and Thailand, from Sweden to Cape Town, New Jersey to Los Angeles, 550 customers in 30 countries work with infoBoard, which is translated into 15 languages and includes 35 country holidays.

InfoBoard covers the following four areas: infoBoard USA LLC serves North and South America from the US, infoBoard Europe GmbH Europe and Africa from Germany and the Netherlands, the time zones in India, Southeast Asia and China, South Korea and Japan are supported by infoBoard International Co. Ltd. Bangkok. Australia, New Zealand and Oceania are managed by infoBoard Autralia (Qmani Melbourne).

As every complex task is split into workable parts. The best way to speak of a live model is:

– Phase 1 Objective and definition of project scope, definition of phase 2 members, definition of external support requirements with infoBoard International services

– Phase 2 Implementation phase with the project members, specification of the scope of application, definition of the workflow, development of the import interfaces, definition of required, further components necessary for success. Limitation to the Pareto rule: with 20% functionality 80% of the task can be done. 2-4 months.

– Phase 3 fine-tuning in all areas: translation of the manual, training documents (video), check of the national holidays, check of the postal codes, check of the software translation, check the on-site technique, setting up an “infoBoard – in our company – wiki” Quality assurance. 2 – 4 months.

– Phase 4 Rollout and training by country. The company-specific manual, the handling of infoBoard, is communicated to the keyuser. An infoBoard FirstLevel Hotline has been set up for the new users in the control center (assembly planning) for one year.

– Phase 5 Review and further development of processes and areas of application after 2 years

It is best to use our software to plan the introduction of infoBoard as a project. The first transformation process starts here, all learn and use 6,000 functions of infoBoard as required. All activities and dates can be coordinated here. The infoBoard service is set up centrally for decentralized use. For the kickoff, this can also take place in an environment externally hosted by infoBoard – just implemented for a Swiss machine manufacturer for printing – (reference on demand).

In order to be able to experience the full technological scope, typical web applications, typical evaluations like infoBoard BusinessController “foreign inserts”,

infoBoard BusinessController Statistik: Häufigkeit des Einsatzes nach Ländern gruppiert

infoBoard BusinessController statistic: Frequency of application grouped by coutnry

the mobile infoBoard server components for Android and IOS (Apple) infoBoard apps

infoBoard Mobile iPhone und Android App

infoBoard Mobile iPhone and Android App

and Outlook / Exchange synchronisation

iBE_iPad_Monat

are ready and provided to the project memebers to learn their use and adapt it to their specific benefits.

There’s also the infoBoard Enterprise Edition with infoBoard Map module for tour planning . A video about infoBoard Map module for a South Tyrolean window and door assembly team is on YouTube. The format (layout) of the infoBoard assembly planning results from the company structure, for example, its own branch offices and partners on site. Extensive experience can be found in this pictures pool. In Phase 4, the partners get a web view restricted to their appointments.

 

infoBoard Map Modul: Übergabe der Adressdaten aus Plantafel auf mobile Geräte per E-Mail und Routenplanung mit Google Maps

infoBoard Map module: Transfer the address data from the planning board to mobile devices via e-mail and route planning with Google Maps

In the end you have the great benefit: deadlines calibrated, employees better informed and satisfied, planners relieved and empowered, increased customer expectations.

Certificate: Global Software

Expertise: worldwide planning competence with infoBoard – The electronic planning board

Consulting contract for visualization solutions with infoBoard: with large, German automobile manufacturers

10 years of proven standard software for business planning with 550 customers translated into 15 languages in 30 countries, with 35 country holidays and 6,000 functions plus > 60 modules, open interfaces.

infoBoard Projektplanung Chinesisch

infoBoard Chinese projectplanning