Time has always been considered as one of the most valuable assets in mankind history, very valuable for people, governments, movements, businesses and of course manufacturing industry it is not the exception, although, time it is an intangible asset, nonetheless, its well management it is reflected on actions, objects that can be felt, seen and touched, those can also be considered as profit, earnings, success, achievements or to be perceived as a remuneration. In the other hand, not all that shines is gold; due when has a bad or not so efficient management, it can represent a loss in every sense, as it is been said, time as a profit likewise as loss are not unaffiliated to happen on the daily tasks at manufacturing plant even though sometimes we tend to consider losses and losses as earnings.  

Time earnings and losses in the industry: Quality audits 

A clear example of efficient and un efficient time management; is the moment of carrying out the audit process, where carry this out, not only consist on a considerable amount of time invested on visiting one production area or site in specific and check everything does comply according to the guidelines, but it is only halfway of this road for continuous improvement. Does exist a before, a during and a after for this whole process can be completed properly, currently  this process requires an important amount of time for beginning to the end, mainly because of the outdated resources and methods used at the moment of planning, preparing, delegating, data entry and creating reports. 

How the time is managed? 

These activities from beginning to end, as we know, consist of two parts: the administrative part and the auditor's part, where the administrative part is aimed on designing or creating the new checklists, scheduling times and dates of audits, likewise assigning the audits to the corresponding personnel, in addition to notify about them; On the auditor's side, time is used to carry out the audit, find the findings, collect evidence, assign actions, verify the resolution of actions or verify if they can be resolved at the time. But not everything ends there for the administrative part, since once the audit is completed, the data is recompiled in order to present the results report in a concise manner. 

How much time an audit process represent? 

Now that we know the main activities carried out in an audit process from start to finish, although determining the time used for these tasks may vary from plant to plant, the size alongside with the number of its areas and production stations can be different, nonetheless based on practical and real scenarios from different plants, in average the following was found: 

  • Administrative time (using conventional methods i.e. excel, email): 

  • +12 hours weekly on audit data entry 

  • +3 hours weekly on report making 

  • +4 hours weekly notifying people 

Total of 988 hours per year in this tasks.

  • Auditor time (using conventional methods i.e. excel): 

+30 mins on performing an audit, with total 40 hours yearly.

How time management can be improve for audit process? 

As seen in the past case, time may represent all, and in this case over 1,000 hours invested in the audit process per year, only in the audit cycle process, it becomes an important  number when we are talking that same hours represent over 40 days of work and effort, work and effort that always can be reduced and managed towards continuous improvement, because what relevant improvement can we except from production areas if audit cycle process does not show any, well answer is as easy as doing a click. Fortunately does exist online solutions available in the market which considerably contributes to reduce and provide an easy, friendly and fully digital ally for the time management, reducing time at 90% per year. 

 If you wanna learn more about how to reduce more costs and improve time management, click here