Higher Productivity with the Right Ticket System

Every company aims to reduce costs and increase profit or turnover. Factors such as employee motivation, the use of proper communication, and competencies that serve employee management are the be-all and end-all to run a company successfully.

In everyday business, however, there are often significant challenges in this area, so the mentioned factors are more or less neglected.

For this reason, more and more companies are using ticket systems that help them and make their work considerably more manageable.

Especially in the age of Industry 4.0, it is essential to develop new concepts to meet the current requirements in production. Modern ticket systems help significantly improve productivity in terms of service and enable an increase of up to 20 percent. This allows the potential of Industry 4.0 to be better utilized in the company.

The ticket system in the changing times of Industry 4.0

Often, the big challenge in manufacturing companies, such as the automotive industry, is that the life cycle of products is becoming shorter and shorter. Due to the rapid digital and technical change, companies are forced to bring new innovative products to the market within a short period. The big challenge here is to remain flexible and (significantly) increase productivity despite increasing demands and that new product ideas have to be implemented promptly. Production in many modern manufacturing companies is mainly automated, resulting in idle time for employees. Because of the high level of automation, they have to spend most of their time keeping an eye on the machines and waiting to see if a malfunction occurs. This creates a lot of waiting time for employees, which could be used more sensibly to bring productivity to a new level. For this to succeed, the organizational processes within production must be reviewed. Then, the show must be driven in the direction of service orientation. This is where Industry 4.0 comes into play. By networking the machines and using predictive maintenance, production gradually becomes the company’s top performer, which exploits its full potential thanks to the Industry 4.0 standard.

Industry 4.0 – These steps are necessary for the introduction of a ticket system in the production

It is necessary to ensure that employees are detached from time and place at the respective production sites to make production effective. An essential part of achieving this is to increase networking, efficiency, and transparency within production using the various tools from Industrie 4.0.

Step 1: Machine connectivity

The first step is to connect machines in production. Older machines must be retrofitted or replaced with new devices to ensure successful communication between the machines. EDGE CONNECT offers a connectivity solution that enables the connection of all appliances. Machine data form the basis for software to analyze and control them.

Step 2: Analysis and evaluation of the machine data

In the next step, the data from the machines must be analyzed and evaluated. This leads to a transparent flow of information. Production can now be monitored in real-time, and faults can be reacted to at any time or even prevented in advance. MES and applications evaluate the data in the process. In the event of deviations at the machines, it informs the operator of the respective machine to intervene. The software even provides the machine operator with suggestions on eliminating the current problem. Predictive maintenance also involves comparing existing machine data with current parameters to see which parts are following at risk of wear in advance. Wear parts can now be detected and replaced at an early stage, reducing machine downtime. Constant monitoring of machine conditions is thus a thing of the past.

Step 3: Introduction of a ticket system

The last step is to introduce a ticket system to make production highly effective. The introduction of the ticket system ensures the shift towards service-oriented production. This also affects communication and the work processes of the individual employees. The ticket system is integrated so that the individual employees in production receive corresponding messages from the system via a smartphone.

The advantage of the ticket system is that information retrieval is decentralized. If there are malfunctions in production or on the machines, the employees receive a message from the ticket system. The tasks stored in the ticket system are forwarded to the corresponding employee. The procedure takes into account the qualifications of the employees currently available. The employees themselves decide whether they want to process the ticket themselves, pass it on to a specialist, or even have it escalated. The ticket system also has the functionality of an internal knowledge database. Due to the history of the tickets and the successful solution of past problems, the employees can solve new problems promptly at any time.

Ticket systems offer the possibility for production staff to define directly or model rules themselves. External programming is therefore not necessary. Employees learn to use the system within a short time. Another advantage for the employees to define their own rules within the ticket system is that the knowledge can permanently improve the entire system.

Often, the changeover to Industrie 4.0-compliant production in conjunction with a ticket system requires in-depth change management. Change management guarantees a smooth transition from the previous (outdated) production process to the new standard.

Questions about the ticket system

After a customer or internal request is received, it is created as a ticket in the helpdesk system. Each access built is given a unique ticket number. This makes the critical individual and can be found quickly in the system. After it has been created, it is assigned to a responsible employee in production.

A ticket system should have a high degree of automation, authorization management, and sophisticated role management. Once the ticket has been assigned to an employee, it is immediately blocked. This prevents several employees from working on the same key, which would lead to pure communication chaos in the latter case. The helpdesk system thus saves the teams time and resources. As a rule, a ticket system leads to the request being processed and solved promptly. Once the ticket has been processed, it is closed. However, a sound system has a ticket history so that access can still be viewed afterward and reopened if necessary.

A sound ticket system also allows assigning the ticket to the corresponding production employee according to the type of request.
A ticket electronically records a request made by a customer or employee. This can be a malfunction or general information about the product or service.

The ticket itself contains, for example:
- A unique number (unique ID), the ticket number
- Who created the key
- When the ticket was created
- The employee who is to process the ticket
- The priority of the access (high, medium, low)
- Contact details of the person who created the ticket
- The ticket status (open, in progress, closed, etc.)
- Description of the problem
- Category of the problem
The following areas are ideal for a helpdesk system:
- All sites related to customer service
- Production
- Security management area
- Facility Management
- HR department
- Call centers and hotlines
- IT departments
- As a flexible system for document management
- As a transparent system for housing management
- As a flexible solution for fleet management
- As a monitoring tool to avoid bottlenecks in resource management
- Ordering system
- Technical projects
Manufacturing that is designed to be service-oriented with the help of a ticket system offers the following advantages:
- Productivity of work is increased through agile ways of working
- Work is independent of time and location
- All activities with their status can be viewed
- Clearly defined organizational processes with different escalation levels
- In imminent machine failures, timely or proactive intervention is possible
- Employees can be trained in a short time
- The tick history creates a knowledge database for employees to consult past approaches to solving problems in the case of current issues
When choosing a ticket system, the following conditions should be met to ensure that the design best fits the needs of the organization:

1) Good usability of the ticket system:

It is also essential that the helpdesk system is easy to use. A good user experience (UX) ensures that support staff can easily find their way around and thus master the whole system in a short time. As a result, staff work through customer queries more quickly. In addition, an easy-to-use user interface reduces training costs for staff.

2) Compare prices:

There are several ticket system providers on the market. Therefore, the company should compare the different providers in terms of tariffs and scope of services. It must be checked whether the range of services offered corresponds to what the company needs. In many cases, a low-cost or even free solution is sufficient.
The ticket systems on the market all have different functionalities. One approach has more functions, the other more minor. The following functionalities should be present in a ticket system in any case so that the process within the production runs smoothly:

1) Automatic processes:

Suppose the ticket system has a high degree of automation (for example, triggers that are time or event-driven) of the various tasks. In that case, this saves valuable time in the overall support process. Automation ensures that specific rules are created for different methods, so that customer requests are already correctly assigned to the respective employee or team. Support at the level of deadlines and escalations through specific rules is also helpful to improve support quality.

2) Support reports:

The ticket system should have extensive analysis and reporting functionality. This way, employees can be evaluated in detail, and the quality of the product can be improved. If the company already uses analysis software, care must ensure that the existing solutions can be easily integrated into the ticket system.

When evaluating the various reports, it is essential to ensure that all labor and data protection aspects are considered.

FORCAM’s ticket system: Create tickets easily & track progress

FORCAM offers a ticket system that has been specially developed for the manufacturing sector. It meets the most diverse requirements within the shop floor organization in the best possible way and can significantly increase productivity. There is still a significant lack of transparency on the shop floor in many companies. Morning shop floor meetings and CIP routines are still not a course. So the question is often: who takes care of what and by when? Order is half the battle in production. With the FORCAM ticket system application, tasks can be distributed digitally with the help of the ticket system, measures can be initiated, and the respective process status can be called up at any time.

Practical example: Time and again, necessary tools are not available on time at a specific workstation—the result: delayed deliveries of the product. Equipped with the FORCAM ticket system, the worker enters his terminal.

what action is required
who has to take care of it
by when action should be taken and with what priority

It is also possible to distribute the action tickets by e-mail and include files or photos to demonstrate the situation. The status of each ticket (completed/open/working) can be tracked by all parties involved at any time.

In addition, the FORCAM ticket system can be used to map Health & Safety tasks or personnel-related issues electronically. In this way, health and safety issues can be visualized user-friendly.