Especially for SME’s – 42: Time – Need for software.

01 June 2022

Mr. Lowe: Before we come to your very valid question, let us make a note of one more thing about the to-do lists that we have to prepare every day. This to-do list should not be a rigid and inflexible list but a dynamic one and may need to be updated many times a day- particularly after completing any one task in the list or when a new task enters suddenly or when you have to say yes to an unexpected customer request.

SME 3: My question was how to do one at a time one after the other when we have a minimum of 6 things on the to-do list?

Mr. Lowe: This can be done only by prioritizing the total number of jobs in the list we have.

SME 2: But a lot of things to be done confuse us while prioritizing and we end up prioritizing what we like to do first! After finishing that, we look at the list again and again we choose what we like. Except of course some things forced on us by Govt. such as factory inspector’s visit etc., which we hate to do but we have no option except to join him.

Mr. Lowe: If your unit runs without violating factory norms, why are you required to accompany him?

This is an elegantly delegatable job.

SME 2: Are there guidelines that we can follow for prioritizing?

Mr. Lowe: Instead of doing what we like to do first, do what SS1 wants us to do first. In other words, commitments to SS1 should decide our priorities and not our likes and dislikes of the tasks to be done.

SME 1: But if there is a competition between two SS 1’s, what we do?

Mr. Lowe: Whenever you face a problem with SS1’s, it is better to have a talk with them and get it resolved. In this meeting one customer can explain his predicament and the other his and let them tell you what you should take up first.

SME 2: There should be lot more factors that decide the guidelines while prioritizing.

Mr. Lowe: Yes, all of them have to do with time and its effective management. The very first step is to make this VRP’s (variable repetitive process) that includes billing, packing and dispatch end date equal to the date committed to the customer.

Have a system (a software program) that works back from here to the first task in the VRP, the latest start dates and end-dates so as to meet the committed delivery time by your unit to the customer, taking into account the series, parallel and partly series and partly parallel. Here it may so happen that some tasks are already late, some are just in time and others offer us some cushion. The software program marks these tasks in red, amber and blue.

SME 1: This can be done manually also, why a software program for that? ……………Contd.