The morning started off with one of the production managers that is already familiar with the software (he too came from the competitor). Most of the discussion was about how it was done at the competitor's place of business. He wants to see things the same way it was used in his past life. Not significant changes to our current processes. Work Centers would all be renamed to what he is used to instead of the simplistic way we currently have it set up. Production supervisors will be expected to take on more responsibility for updating 'product status' in the new system. They have fought tooth and nail to avoid managing any data in the current system. That will be unacceptable in the new system, but was understandable in the past (in management's eyes...not mine)
A big concern is that employees currently do not clock in on correct jobs or correct work centers. How can we make them start doing this in the new system? This has caused significant issues tracking labor values in WIP and finished goods. The solution is to directly tie the shop floor employee's time to payroll. We changed to a new payroll system the first of the year. Now they are going to change the way employees and supervisors report time, again, to HR. They expect this to take place the week after go live, since go live is in the middle of a pay period. HQ doesn't support us doing this since we just changed systems (that was not a smooth transition at all). We did receive all of the interface requirements from the payroll company. No deadline designated yet to have the interface created.
Quality Control (inspection) was the topic of conversation in the afternoon. Many systems were created for our competitor. None exactly match our processes. We have specific forms and checkoff sheets being used. It was decided to try to electronically create many of those documents in the new system, and link them to the existing rework process in the new software. Other documents will just be scanned and linked for the time being. No real decisions made concerning which would be in the system before go live.
We discussed how the scanned documents and finished good pictures would be 'linked' in the new system. This created a little panic from me. The new system 'imports' the documents onto the applications server, rather than linking them to the live files. Concerns:
- Drive space- I am not sure what was communicated to HQ when they ordered the servers. Do they have adequate drive space for all companies to link all docs and pics within the system? That will end up being a substantial amount of TB to backup. I am not sure an adequate disaster recovery plan was discussed given this new data.
- Pipeline- What happens when we start pushing multiple 5 mb files across the VPN? Is that going to slow processing? What is the load time to pull up one of these images that is supposed to be more convenient?
- Importing Live Documents? What happens when a live file is updated on our side? Will the user remember to re-import that document through the ERP Software? Do we have outdated documents in the new system and different versions onsite? The thought scares me a little. I have worked with document management in the past. I would never have imagined handling it this way.
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