Allow Simple Manual Entry for Actual Time of a Production Run in DEAR and in MES app.
I really want to get our company using the new MES app as the functionality it adds if phenomenal, however, I know already that it is going to tick off every single one of our machinists if they have to be constantly pulling out their phones to press play and pause etc. every time they step away from the machine. We trust our machinists to properly bill time to individual tasks on their own and would love it if rather than being forced to take the time recorded by the stopwatch, we could instead just have an overall Setting for Production BOMs that allows Production BOMs Actual Time to be inputted manually and then just have a complete button for each step saying "I'm satisfied with the manual data entered." without having to jump through hoops of pressing Start then Complete then backtrack and update the value later in the web app (just fully disable the stopwatch functionality with the setting).
I realize this will mean the Gant chart isn't 100% accurate every second of the day, but we're okay with that. So long as when they submit the time for the job, DEAR assumes that they just barely completed the job, then the Gant chart can show a relative history of what has happened.
We are not looking to babysit every process with a stopwatch as any 1 machinist might be doing 3 or 4 things at once and the need to press Play and Pause or manually update values to real numbers After needlessly pressing Start and Complete is just annoying (especially when that manual update must be done on the webpage).
Looking forward to using this app, but can't until this nuisance in work-flow is resolved as any added benefit form the app is almost immediately lost by the need for post process manual entry.
We have run in to the exact same issue.
It is not realistic for us to request this of our machinists and ironically following the process of pressing play & pause will make their work less efficient.
This part of a Production BOM has completely hindered our ability to utilise the feature.
Having played around with the app a bit more, something else I've noticed that you can't view tasks that were previously finished that day or that session. Why not? As soon as a task is completed in the app it vanishes from the app entirely. It just seems unnecessary. Let the app have a setting for how many days back you want to see of completed tasks so that the machinists can review what they've already done and see their past notes.
Also, there's a semi related request to this one. Here's the link for it.
https://support.dearsystems.com/support/discussions/topics/11000037269
I personally don't use this app as we are a food manufacturer and don't encourage the use of mobile phones while handling food. So we would like the paperwork to allow the packer / operator to complete the timings. Production data entry is normally completed by an admin person and at the moment it is a bit awkward on how to enter it. You have to start the run, enter the actual usage, complete the run, then go back into the production order, enter the time, then back into output and complete. I should be able to enter the time when entering the usage before completing.
Even what Natalie described would work way better than the current system for our needs.