Continuing with the medical analogy of the title, anyone who’s spent time in a hospital will be familiar with the doctor’s rounds in the morning. A tour of the ward to get an update on each case’s condition, progress, or decline. Life on the plant floor is not so different, in fact.
In a decades-long tradition, when the shift changes, a supervisor, or foreman, will have toured the plant to make sure everything is spick and span for the coming working day. For many, this happened, and still happens today, with a clipboard in hand. Shepherd suggests a different approach: take a tablet (or phone) instead. This blog looks at Shepherd’s morning rounds feature, giving plant managers and their teams an edge in paper trails and planning alike.
NetSuite case creation from the shop floor
This might happen at a site with rented assets, or a production plant with the company’s own assets. It could be happening simultaneously across multiple sites in the region. By making a point of moving around all the workstations, production lines, vehicles, and installations, together with a debrief of the operators and technicians concerned, faults or concerns can be recorded in Shepherd’s App.
This allows the issue to be reported as a “NetSuite case.” Once open, Shepherd’s solution allows for information to move back and forth between affected parties, like the supervisor on site and the manager in the head office. Photographs can be taken of the asset using the handheld device, and these can be appended to the case as part of the reported data.
Eliminates the duplication of work, and therefore costs
It may be that others have also noted the fault in question, and in such cases, by matching asset identifiers. Using the chat function included, the manager and technician can discuss the situation. They can then decide which of the two reports to delete and which to promote, and how: does it require raising a service order, or requesting a replacement rental unit under the terms of the contract?
Of course, this is not a routine that Shepherd has invented. As described earlier, this habit of getting the lay of the land before starting the new day has been an operational procedure for decades across innumerable industries. But what Shepherd does is make it easier and surer. Let’s compare with what might have come before: a notebook or clipboard.
More than just time
Certainly, a clipboard needs no charger, but beyond that, there is illegible handwriting and stains, together with the very real need for accurate data entry. Will all details be written down, or remembered for when the walkaround is over? Will they be transcribed faithfully once back in the office? Will it even be the same person as on the walkaround itself? After all, a supervisor has many tasks to perform, and form-filling may not be high on the list.
By contrast, the phone or tablet option means that by the time the supervisor has entered the relevant facts of a fault or issue, and moved on to the next work station or production line, that report is already in the system as a case. Any images or scanned codes related to it are also recorded and saved in the case record for later action.
And, as already mentioned, there is no need for tedious manual cross-referencing later. If that asset is already in the system, it is immediately obvious. And if the dates are similar and the issues are too, then realizing it’s the same problem reported twice is an easy spot and easier fix. To top it all off, with talk-to-text a ubiquitous feature of handheld devices these days, using Shepherd’s answer means the supervisor doesn’t even need to type.
It’s the accumulated time-saving and error-avoidance of Shepherd features like this that accumulate over the days and weeks to amount to masses of reductions in admin workload, and retrospective checking or correcting. The process is shorter in its execution, with far, far fewer potential mistakes, reducing the time needed from both ends of the process.
Clear data to act on
The case is created, and decision makers then have all they need to…well…decide. The manager can be alerted for their input on the best course of action, be it based on judgment, experience, or company procedure. And let’s not forget that those minutes saved in entering and escalating the issue are not just a convenience for the supervisor. A fault may be critical to operations, and action urgently needed. Those minutes off the supervisor’s plate could also be thousands saved in lost revenue for the company if caught early enough.
Paper and pen will always have their place, but this is a preliminary form of case creation, distinct and more concrete for referencing a problem that’s identified. Once created, it is far harder to overlook or forget the way a message in your inbox, or a sheet in your in-tray, might be buried under a dozen others.
These processes apply to plant-wide inspections, rental fleet reviews, and shift changes. They can happen in a small family-run production mill, a sprawling manufacturing facility, or an oil rig, even a hospital with controlled conditions and crucial equipment. Cumulatively, across the board, this feature amounts to entire work days saved by not having the small admin minutiae getting in the way. And all that time, as we know, is money.
Surprisingly broad implications for companies
The end result is not only an escalated case, sometimes within minutes, but can result in department- or company-wide changes with not just financial implications but Health and Safety considerations too. You have a digital record that, once created, instantly shows up in different systems, where relevant, such as the service manager’s planner board, the inventory manager’s allocation list, and eventually the accountant’s sales order list. A complete audit trail, all from one entry, one morning: no more “post-it” admin.
A further testament to the significance of what might seem a minor functionality at first glance is that new customers frequently ask if such a feature exists as early as Shepherd’s initial discovery calls. To find out which other priorities of yours are already catered for in Shepherd’s solution, why not book a demo call today?
