When Advanced Tool, Inc. recently decided to expand its offerings beyond precision cutting tools for the automotive and aerospace industries, it implemented changes that have already started to see results. In a recent press release, Advance Tools' CEO said, “We are on a path of large growth.”

What has led to such measurable results for this 33-year-old company? “An important tool to spur that growth is another of the CEO's changes at the company. Along with diversifying the company's tool offerings, the company can now also act as a tool-inventory manager for its clients. ‘We have a proprietary software package,' the CEO says. ‘It's a shop-floor-management inventory system.' The program helps clients keep track of their cutting tools, what ones are used the most, and when new ones are ordered.”

Advanced Tool, Inc. isn't the only company leveraging factory/shop floor management to its advantage. By getting in touch with factory floor innovation, CEOs across a wide range of industries can touch, monitor and adapt every shop floor process for real-time improvement that delivers greater profitability.

The only system that enables manufacturers to compete on speed rather than cost and which delivers real-time, continuous improvement for greater profitability and faster delivery to customers, one shop floor management innovation is giving factory owners the competitive edge that keeps them in touch with their factory floor.

From machine performance to factory data collection, a factory floor management system can give CEOs like those at Advanced Tool complete shop floor control. Some of the growth-fueling benefits of using this technology include:

1. The ability to discover and resolve shop floor problems faster – A factory floor management system informs shop owners of special instructions with reminders, provides shift-to-shift information on screen, distributes email messages to specific areas or persons through an easy-to-use system and automatically notifies factory floor personnel of a floor problem so action can be taken immediately.

2. The provision of alert messages – A shop floor management system enables factory production control to set up alarm parameters that can alert the floor of problems. Such issues may include:

o Lower-than-predicted efficiency levels

o Higher-than-expected scrap levels

o Movement outside of quality ranges

3. The containment of a ‘What If?' feature – Such a feature enables factory owners to work around unanticipated changes. As such, it reduces the need for expensive outsourcing, safety stock and premium shipping. Shop floor managers simply key-in different customer delivery scenarios and the factory floor management system automatically calculates the workflow process for each.

4. Reporting of critical information on a daily basis – A factory floor management system delivers management reports in five categories: Machine Performance, Labor Performance, Part Analysis, Problem Analysis, and Scrap Analysis. This information, delivered on demand, provides a feedback loop so shop floor managers can make critical decisions and produce a scorecard for employees.

5. Easy integration and system compatibility ¬ – A shop floor management system works with a variety of off-the-shelf and customized software packages. It can also receive information electronically – including orders upstream from ERP/MRP and office systems to machine monitoring equipment delivered downstream. In addition, a factory floor management system can link with other systems such as Computer-Aided Design (CAD).