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A Day in the Life of a Manufacturing Production Manager

As a manufacturing production manager, you will be involved with all the planning and control of manufacturing processes. Certainly a production manager knows that when they get up each day, there is going to be a challenging day ahead.

A manufacturing production manager is kind of like a jack of all trades in the organisation because apart from overseeing the entire production of products, they will have to be clued up in other related areas such as marketing, sales and finance. This can be tricky for the production manager who, when the economy is slowly recovering, has to ensure goods are produced efficiently in the right amounts so as to guarantee quality and affordability for the entire organisation. To this end they will need to get authorisation and funding for certain products and services as well.

The production manager is expected to, with their skills and wisdom, bring about profitability for the department and entire organisation so that they can be credited with bringing about a better life for all and an upbeat morale among the workers.

Quality and Consistency towards Great Products

The manufacturing production manager has to ensure that wherever their products are used – all over the world – their products are synonymous with superb quality and consistent excellence. Some production managers really have their work cut out for them because there are companies who are involved with not one, but many kinds of production, simply adding to the complexity of the production manager’s job.

A production manager you are in charge of everything that is being produced. You have to be able to work well with people because every day they will be involved with a team of people from the pre-production stage to the completion of the products and their distribution This will involve liaising with the like of production engineers- and supervisors as well as controllers and planners.

Manufacturing Production Managers Day

Let us look at what an average day looks like for a production manager, bearing in mind that the nature of the work will depend of the type of goods being produced as well as the size of the organisation.

8.30 am – You swipe on and walk around the factory. You will check the despatch area, production areas, see what is happening and make sure everything’s working. With ProgressPlus Time and Attendance module you would be able to utilise it to clock in, generate pay reports, keep employee holiday records and compare time attended with productive time.

9am – You will check to see what orders came in and what we need to progress with for the day. With ProgressPlus  you can automatically produce job cards as soon as the sales order has been entered. Among other things it also shows you outstanding order reports by customer, date, status, quantities, time, etc.

10am – You will visit the main office and have a production meeting. You will speak about the position of the factory, stock, quality and what the day will look like.

11am – After the production meeting you will have the factory meeting. Most likely you will be checking whiteboards to view the daily results of the factory area. KPIs include; customer service, delivery, stock, order placed and most importantly how much money the company is making. With ProgressPlus, you could be utilising the online KPI module to view all these results on your tablet or laptop or even on a screen in the workshop.

11.30am – The manufacturing production manager will be checking issues. You will be checking stock and dealing with any quality issues. With ProgressPlus quality management module, you will have a non-conformance database linking to Works Orders, Purchase Orders and material batches. Also, with Inventory Stock Control Module you can be analysing stock movement and checking if you have a full bill or materials for jobs.

4pm – As a production manager you will have lots of up and downs highly dependent on if the customer receives their product in time or not. ProgressPlus allows and controls deliveries of multiple orders on one note and generates delivery performance reports. Also, you can use the CRM module to keep note of customer communications such as the complete Customer/Supplier history – e.g. quotes, orders, invoices, etc.

5pm – Swipe out and go home.

This is just a summary of possible day, however, some of the tasks of the production manager include –

  • Estimating costs of the entire manufacturing process while ensuring quality standards
  • Overseeing the production process, drawing up a production schedule
  • Each and every day the production manager will be having to prioritise tasks and know how to do the most important thing first
  • The entire production process has to be constantly monitored to make sure schedules and amounts are being met
  • The production manager has to check that all the equipment and machines are being maintained and that they are always ready to go into production for orders
  • Has to be constantly implementing quality control programmes
  • Has to be constantly motivating and encouraging an entire team of workers – at the same time the production manager has to identify where some of the workers may require additional training
  • Has to ensure that all health and safety guidelines are adhered to
  • Ensuring that the entire production effort is cost-effective
  • Making sure products are produced on time, but that they are of high quality
  • Time is everything and the production manager must establish a timeline for the job
  • The production manager must work out how many people will need to be involved in the production of products and what resources will be required
  • The production manager is constantly liaising with different departments, suppliers and managers – everyone involved in the production process
  • Ensuring that all the company’s goals and policies are implemented throughout the production process

A Demanding but Satisfying Day at Work

The life of a manufacturing production manager may well be stressful and demanding  but it can be satisfying knowing that you play a vital role in getting good products out to your ever-watchful clients.

See how you can make your role easier by using ProgressPlus. Request a free online demo today.