The production report is used extensively in manufacturing operations. Production is where the money is made for the business. Almost all other employees of a manufacturing business that are not directly involved in the production of goods will support the production operations in some way. Since production operations is where the money is made, it is necessary to review and analyze it, one way to do this by reviewing the production report.
The format of the report will vary from business to business
based on the manufacturing resource package (MRP)
that is being used, the requirements of management, and the amount of
detail analysis that is desired. It is possible for every employee that
is involved in production and the support of production to record their
time in detail, recording the time spent working on a particular part,
the amount of downtime, the setup time, etc. All this is very useful
information, but most plants will not collect this much detail because
it is difficult and expensive to do so.
Usually, a standard is developed by engineering that determines how
many pieces can be manufactured in a certain amount of time. The
engineers will take into account employee break times, machine
downtime, machine cycle times, etc. This standard then is entered into
the MRP system and is used to calculate standard costs and produce
reports for management.
Below is a very small example of how the production report might look.
The information will be by part number, and will show the pieces
produced, the time spent on production, standard hours earned, etc.
Most measurements are compared to the standard that was developed. This
information can be used to analyze how operations are doing. If the
actual amount of pieces produced are much less than the standard, then
management will look into why this happened. A plan may be developed to
correct problems or to engineer improvements in the work area.
Part
# 1
Part#
2
Part#
3
Operation
10
20
10
Pcs
Produced
1000
800
350
Production
Hours
6
3
12
Downtime
Hours
2
.50
4
Pcs
per
Hour
167
267
29
Std
Pcs
per Hour
300
300
200
Actual
vs
Std per hr
-133
-33
-171
Often, ideas to automate a work area, rearrange a work cell, speed up
machinery, and other ways to improve the production rate and costs will
start with this report. Sometimes, a company will quote new work
knowing that it will lose money on it if production remains the way it
is, but they are confident that enough improvements can be made to the
process to create a profit. In these cases, this report is very
valuable, and will be compared to previous reports to see progress over
time.