What Is a Daily Production Report?
A daily production report provides detailed information about a manufacturing company’s production data. It informs stakeholders of what has been or has not been produced and why. It contains details about the efficiency of machines and human resources. It’s an effective tool for catching potential issues before they cause irreversible damage to the business.
The daily production report manufacturing businesses use them to make decisions based on facts and data. After seeing the data in the daily production report, business owners can make decisions about the company’s future. Knowing about the speed of the production process is essential for improving the system and boosting profits.
What Is the Purpose of a Daily Production Report?
Businesses are meant to make profits. But to enjoy the profits, companies first must work hard. Gains don’t come easily; you must earn them.
There are various techniques businesses can use to make sure they make profits. They need to cut costs and avoid unnecessary expenses. They must strive for efficiency and increase their production levels.
Productivity and efficiency are assessed regularly. And this is where a daily production report becomes necessary.
A daily production report can help manufacturers track key performance indicators (KPIs) and manufacturing business metrics. A production report could also come in handy for safety records and union requirements.
Manufacturing businesses must be able to follow lean manufacturing processes. And part of this is to track the KPIs that are vital to manufacturing plants. Some of these KPIs are:
I. On-time Delivery (OTD)
This metric is the percentage of products delivered on time. All manufacturers should aim for 100% fulfillment. It is one of the top signs that your operations are efficient.
On-time delivery fosters customer loyalty. Customers expect you to set reasonable expectations and meet them. When you do, they know they can rely on you.
II. Production Schedule Attainment
The production schedule is the plan of how your budget will be spent over a given time. Production schedule attainment measures how much of this your team achieves.
This KPI is necessary for on-time delivery. If you fail to meet some of your production schedules, you risk missing delivery. Monitoring production schedule attainment can help you conduct root cause analysis and create a plan for improving your production.
III. Throughput
Throughput is the number of products your factory can produce and deliver to your customer within a specific amount of time. Equipment downtime, bottlenecks, and product quality affect your throughput. Including this metric in your daily production report can help you determine the factors that need improvement.
IV. Total Cycle Time
Total cycle time can be calculated by dividing the total amount of goods produced by the time it took to produce those goods.
No two manufacturing processes are alike. They have production elements or stages unique to the project. The number of steps in the production of a specific product affects the total cycle time.
Knowing your total cycle time can help you improve your manufacturing process. It can help in improving your team’s productivity, logistics, and yield-loss management. Cycle time is a crucial element of lean manufacturing processes. It informs workers how to manage their time and complete a finished product on schedule.
V. Production Yield
You can get a production yield metric by dividing the number of non-defective items by the total number of items produced. It is an indicator of your team’s efficiency and profitability. It is one of the most important KPIs you need to track.
This metric, however, can be deceiving if the number of non-defective parts includes a large percentage that needed reworking or retesting to earn approval.
For example, a 98 percent yield sounds excellent, but if 50 percent of the output needed reworking, your process might be inefficient. The cost of producing each item might be too expensive, which affects your profits.
A production report that reflects your production yield can help you identify which processes need polishing. Doing so can help you improve your throughput and total cycle time. Therefore, a daily production report can make it more possible for you to meet a target of a 98% yield or more.
How to Create a Daily Production Report in 5 Steps
Writing a daily production report will be easier if you follow these five steps. Once you’ve gone through them for your production, it’s a good idea to create a daily production report template that you can use over and over.
1. Step: Create a Realistic Plan
The first step to creating a production plan is to summarize what you want to achieve. Once you develop a solid production plan, you will know the necessary activities that will help you achieve your goals.
You might need to make changes to your production plan until you discover a realistic and achievable one. A daily production report can also be helpful in this case.
Your daily production report will have the necessary information you need to improve your production plans, such as your team’s total cycle time, yield, and throughput.
2. Step: Have Clear Objectives
Objectives give your work a clear direction. When your goals are clear, you know what you are trying to achieve. It helps you organize the tasks for a seamless workflow.
Being organized is vital to on-time delivery, which you already know is an important KPI in manufacturing.
3. Step: Organize the Tasks
An excellent example of a daily production report has a list of tasks organized so that tracking the progress is easy. Doing so will make your daily production report a valuable tool for reviewing each step and the team’s overall progress. An easy-to-understand and time-efficient production report are indispensable to a successful manufacturing business.
4. Step: Assign Tasks
Tasks are done fast and effectively if they are assigned to the right person. So, assign roles based on an employee’s area of expertise. Ensure that all tasks are in the right hands by having their daily production report include the names of your employees and the tasks they are working on.
5. Step: Monitor and Evaluate
Keeping track of tasks is an important part of tracking project progress. It helps you make appropriate changes in your production process when needed. Monitoring and evaluating tasks through your daily production report helps you ensure that no employee is slacking off or running equipment error-free.
How a digital tool helps by the daily production report
The production team tasked with filling out production reports daily needs a method of gathering the information that is efficient and reliable. Pen and paper is the traditional method of collecting data. However, it comes with some unreliability: papers can get lost, sharing about incidents is time-consuming, and analysis is costly.
Lumiform, the powerful app, and desktop software for inspections and audits, digitizes data collection and analysis. The production team can efficiently complete daily production reports with online templates and have more time for other tasks. Producers and other stakeholders keep track of the project’s progress through the digital tool and monitor the production team’s expenses.
Take advantage of the following to make your production reliable and efficient:
- Fill out the daily production report template using the app from your mobile device on site.
- Go digital immediately using one of our templates from the Lumiform library.
- Capture photo evidence to make the report more descriptive.
- Report production discrepancies immediately to appropriate staff. Track progress in corrective actions via the tool.
- Automatically generate reports and send them to management and responsible employees
- Analyze the collected data online to identify early where you need to intervene and continuously improve your production processes
