I've started counting my setup hours instead of calling them spare time, and this packing trial looks rather different now. The FR5 places our little hardware bags neatly once I've prepared them. Then the next order arrives with a different bag seam or loose contents and I make another guide.
One bag family repeats often enough that I still think there might be something worth keeping. My colleague says I'm protecting the machine from the actual work. How would you decide whether to keep that narrow case, pause the trial or stop altogether?
Price the narrow case on its own, including preparation, changeover and who maintains its guide; the other families shouldn't become free development work hiding behind its successful placements
Does the repeating family keep the same bag construction across orders, or only the same product name? That would affect how narrow the supposedly stable case really is.
Try having somebody else prepare a normal order. Not a demonstration bag you've straightened for them. If you still need to stand there explaining each one, that is part of the process you are evaluating.
Emma, same construction on the recent orders, but no promise it stays that way. Jonas, my colleague can prepare them from our current instructions. He is slower than me, which I've been unfairly treating as his problem
I would not kill the repeating family because the rest are poor candidates. On a fixture project we kept one reliable task and stopped trying to make it universal. The important bit was that the retained task justified its own setup and storage.
Shared space, with removal and reinstatement counted. If those had swallowed the benefit, we would have stopped it too. Keeping one task was a result of the comparison, not a rule that every project deserves a survivor.
Ours shares the packing bench. I had counted fitting the guide, not getting the previous job out of the way or putting everything back. That's going into both methods now, before I claim the repeat family pays for itself
Who would maintain the guide and instructions if that family survives? Your colleague being able to prepare an order does not yet answer who handles the next damaged or changed guide.
New guides are paused. Toolroom can own the retained design, but wants a controlled drawing and replacement plan. Those are additional costs, not favours I've already been promised
That makes the choice less romantic. I'd compare finishing that handover against stopping now, with the past development cost shown but not used as a reason to buy the next piece of work.
He moved the bag supply and labels closer and cut some handling. I was comparing against the old manual timings. So yes, the target moved for a good reason this time
The full comparison now favours his revised manual method for our current orders. We've stopped further guide development and kept the bench change. Thank you Callum, testing the narrow case properly let me stop defending it on principle
Fair result. Is the guide information retained somewhere usable, rather than leaving unidentified bits for stores to puzzle over when the bench is cleared?