Can you help me find out a software program that calculates SAMS based on historical data?
This question was asked by an OCS fan. I thought to share my answer to this question with you as this is a common query comes from industrial engineers working in the readymade garment industry.
Answer:
Are you looking for a solution that can tell you product SAM (operation wise) from historical data?
I have two questions. (1) What do you mean by historical data? Do you have all historical data for operations cycle time/ capacity study data? (2) Are you planning to have something for capturing historical data?
Software is available to establish garment SAM (standard time for garment jobs/operations) which work just opposite way. It estimates operations standard minute (SAM) before you load garments on the machine. The estimated SAM is used in many ways in production planning, cost estimation, performance analysis, method improvement and operator training etc.
Read this post to know about available software for estimating garment SAM.
In case you want a solution that can tell you garment operation SAM based on operators' actual operation cycle time, that can be done by using real-time shop floor solutions (RFID technology based systems). I am associated with BlueCherry shop floor control system (formerly Leadtec), an RFID technology-based real-time production tracking and control system. This software records times for completing each bundle/ single piece with many other benefits.
Read this article to more about RFID based shop floor production control system. By installing this kind of real-time systems you can capture true operation cycle time. With those actual cycle time data, you can establish standard time by applying rating factors and adding allowance (Note: you need to study operator rating for this).
Let's you an operator worked a full day in one operation. She made 200 garments (in that operation). She got 20 bundles of 10 pieces each. Assuming that you have captured bundle start time and bundle end time for all 10 bundles. You have real data of how much time is taken by an operator to complete each bundle and each garment. So, you have the average time of sewing one garment (in a single operation).
This way you can capture daily bundle work time for all bundles for all employees for a couple of days. Manually it is not possible of capturing bundle time for all workers and all operations. From this historical data, you can find out the true operation cycle time. Once you have the operation cycle time, you know how to convert it into standard time.
This way a software system can provide you with operation SAM from historical data. I hope my explanation will help you to understand the thing related to standard time estimation.
Even factories that are using PMTS software to establish standard time need to analysis historical SAM data from time to time to check the difference between given standards and actual time taken by operators. This practice will help an engineer in both ways – to improve accuracy in setting standard time using software and improve the working method.
Also see: How to calculate SAM of a garment?