Increasing Task Administration Efficiency by Means of a Customizable ICT Solution

Abstract

In production companies, managers frequently deal with inefficiencies caused by employees learning about new tasks with a considerable delay. The paper focuses on solving the lack of real-time interaction in currently used task administration systems by means of an ICT solution. The main causes of the inefficiencies consist in insufficient real-time information on the sides of both workers and managers. Employees view updates in the information system randomly, thus increasing unnecessary periods of idle time, while their superiors are not fully informed about the status of tasks in progress and about current workload of individual workers. The presented ICT solution was developed for production companies and implemented for the purpose of administering production line failure records. The solution is based on informing employees about a new maintenance task online in real time, using a combination of the designed information system with a mobile phone. The presented system utilizes advanced information technologies – cloud messaging, mobile applications, and web applications. The employee will be equipped with a smartphone with a specially designed application. By a notification sent to the mobile phone, the employee will be immediately informed about the task assigned. As regards task administering, employees enter information about the phases of task execution and managers are informed about the status of executed tasks. Another key feature of the system is providing managers with managerial overviews and compiling reports in order to monitor a number of key indicators. The Unified Process (UP) methodology was used to design the information system. The system accelerates the process of receiving tasks by individual maintenance workers after a failure has been reported, an online overview of the status of work on failures, including a managerial overview of the work of individual workers and the total time spent on solving the task (e.g. a production line defect removal). The system is designed to be universally applicable in other workplaces.