As a supervisor on the production floor, there can be a lot to keep track of. inFlow’s Production Management features help you stay organized on the manufacturing floor. 

This is a new feature that our team is rolling out in several phases. Check back here for updates!

What is production management?

Production management is a feature available for inFlow Manufacturing that allows your team to track detailed manufacturing operations, oversee processes, streamline tooling, and accurately monitor labor costs for manufacture orders (MOs).

Features include:  

• Add manufacturing operations to the product bill of materials.
• View all operations that are set to start and planned across open and ongoing manufacture orders.
• Track employee hourly rates (labor).
• Track hourly cost for each operation (hourly wage & operation time).
• Track labor timesheets per operation. 
• Report on operation/labor timesheets.
• Run reports on operation variances (differences between assemblies for the same product). 

Setup/workflow

Here are all the pieces you’d need to make the most of this feature. 

Tracking labor costs:

1. Ensure your products with a bill of materials have a list of operations you’d want to track labor for. 
2. Set the estimated hourly cost and estimated duration for the operation. 
3. Set up your operators with their logins and set their labor hour cost.
4. When your operators work on a manufacture order, they should record their labor time by clicking the available Start timesheet button, and Complete operation when they are finished with that operation. Timesheets can be adjusted later if necessary.
5. Once the manufacture order is marked completed, inFlow will calculate the labor cost with their associated per-hour labor cost, and the time recorded on each operation. All those calculations will be folded into the finished product’s cost. 

Labor costs only contribute to the cost of goods sold.

Creating a bill of materials (BOM)

To get started, add a bill of materials to each product your team assembles. 

1. Open a product, and select the Manufacturing tab. 
2. Click Add a bill of materials. 
3. Select the products from the product list. You can scan or click on the same product multiple times to increase the quantity of the component product. Click outside of the product list to close it. 
4. Click Save when done. 

To add bill of materials lists in bulk, see the bill of materials importing guide. 

Creating operations on the bill of materials

Next to the bill of materials component list, you can enter the manufacturing operations to assemble the product. 

This section allows you to track estimated costs and instructions for each stage of the manufacturing process.

1. On the Manufacturing tab, the default operation will be added alongside the bill of materials. 
2. To add a new operation, start typing in the Operation field, then select the plus icon to add the operation to your inFlow settings. 
3. Keep Track labor costs selected if you track the hourly labor cost for the operation. 
4. Click on Add cost to enter the estimated per-hour cost and duration. If you’ve deselected Track labor cost, enter the fee for this operation in the Per-unit cost field. 
5. Optionally, click Add instructions to add assembly steps for this operation. 
6. Click Add operations to add more manufacturing operations to the product, then repeat steps 2 to 4. 
7. Save the product record when done. 

Operations on the manufacture order

Now that your operations have been added to the assembly product, whenever you create a manufacture order for that product, those operations will be listed on the assembly screen. 

1. To start recording work on an operation, click the Start timesheet button. A timer will start recording the work under your login. Multiple operators can start their own timesheets on the same operation, and it will track them separately.
2. Clicking on “Stop timesheet” will stop your current timesheet. Use this for breaks or handing off to others. The progress is still recorded and can be viewed in the Details modal on the top right.
3. Click on “Complete operation” to mark the operation as completed. This will stop all ongoing timesheets for anyone else on the same operation in that manufacture order as well. 

Timesheet details 

Admins can view the timesheets for any given operation by clicking the Details modal. This shows any past or ongoing timesheets, along with the team member, start and end times, and duration. Cost and total cost may be viewable depending on specific access rights. 

Admin/supervisor operation tools

Viewing current operations

Having access to view all the tasks on the production floor is a key part of this feature, and the Current operations can assist with that. This view groups your manufacture orders by operation, and you can estimate when all those orders can be completed based on the hours available to your team. 

1. Open Current operations (Main menu> hover over Manufacturing > Custom operations). 
2. At the top left of the screen, you can select the location you want to view operations for. 
3. Select either All planned or Ready to start to view the operations in each status. 
4. For any operation, you can optionally select Estimate completion date, then fill in the number of hours in the Capacity field. Based on the estimated labor hours, inFlow will calculate an estimated completion date for that specific operation in those orders. 
5. Click on an operation to view all of the manufacture orders that would need the operation to be completed. Click on the MO order number to open it in a new browser tab. 

Manufacture operation types (Inventory settings)

If you want to add manufacturing operations outside the product bill of materials, you can do so directly in the Inventory settings.

1. Go to the Inventory settings (Main Menu, hover over the Settings icon, then click on Inventory).
2. Click on Manufacturing operations.
3. Select Add operation type, then enter the operation name. Track labor cost is selected by default. You can set an estimated labor cost per hour by entering the amount in the per hour field. Whenever that operation is added to a bill of materials, this amount will automatically fill in the estimated hourly rate. 
4. If you’re not tracking hourly labor, deselect Track labor cost. The per-unit cost can still be entered in the operations on the product bill of materials. 
5. Click Save when done. 

Setting team member labor rates

You can set the labor cost per-team member, and this will override the estimated labor cost per hour on a manufacture order when that team member completes an operation. This setting is only available to admins. 

1. Go to the inFlow Team settings (Main Menu, hover over the Settings icon, then click on Team).
2. Click on Manufacture team labor costs.
3. Enter the hourly rate in the per hour field. 
4. Click Save when done. 

Access rights for production management

Admins in inFlow have the flexibility to manage access rights for every team member. 

If someone no longer needs editing capabilities, you can toggle the feature off or choose View only. 

Production management reports

The reports below are useful for monitoring labor timesheets and identifying discrepancies between completed operations.

Operation timesheet report

This report provides a list of manufacturing operation timesheets to analyze labor productivity history. Click here to generate the Operation timesheet report.

Operation variance

This report shows the variance between the actual and expected labor and other costs for manufacturing order operations. Click here to generate the Operation variance report.