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Work Centers
A Work Center is a group of Employees.
Imagine three Employees - all who work in the assembly area or assembly department.
Sometimes you will have a Task that will only be carried out by one of those Employees but at the time of entering the Job you are not sure which one (i.e. it could be any of them).
What you could do is Assign or Auto Assign the Task to all three Employees - the problem then is that eventually they will have many many Tasks on their Job Start End pages most of which they will not do - this will lead to increased time and frustration trying to find the correct Task to work on.
The way to resolve this is to use Work Centers.
It may help to think of a Work Center as an area or a department such as Assembly, Paint Shop, Machine Shop, etc. but from Empower's perspective this is not strictly correct.
The Work Center may be named Assembly but it is not the Assembly area or department, but rather the group of people that work in that area.
It does not mean the assembly area - it may not have anything to do with assembling anything, it is simply a group of Employees.
Tasks can Assigned or Auto Assigned to a Work Center.
Employees out in the factory are then able to Assign work to them selves from the Work Center. Note that after Assigning or Auto Assigning a Task to a Work Center that does not automatically display on the Employees pages - they need to go into the Work Center and Assign it to them selves - see below for how to do this.
To set up Work Centers, from the Main Management Menu go to Set Up > Advanced Set Up > Work Center. You should see page similar to
Add Work Center names and click on Add.
You can Assign and Auto Assign Tasks to Work Centers. The above sort order will be reflected when Assigning and Auto Assigning Tasks to Work Centers and also when assigning Work Centers to the Employee (see below).
To view the Tasks in each Work Center. From the Main Management Menu go to View > Work Center Tasks.
To add an Employee to a Work Center from the Main Management Menu go to Set Up > Employee and select the appropriate Employee.
See Setting Up Employees.
Select the Work Center that the Employee usually works in (see highlighted above)
If the Employee works in more than one Work Center, ensure that Show All Work Centers is set to on (see highlighted above).
This will add additional buttons in the Factory Task Start Stop screen where the Employee can access and assign Work Center Tasks to himself (see below).
Clicking on the Work Centers button displays the Work Center pages, where the Employee can Assign Tasks to himself, or Assign and Start Tasks (see highlighted below).
In this way only Tasks the Employee is working on will be on the Task Start Stop page.
It is also possible to view the Tasks in the Work Center from the Management version. To do this, from the Main Management menu select View > Work Center > Tasks.
The default sort for the Work Center pages can be changed - for more information see Task Sorting.
See also
Introducing Tasks
Auto Assign
Barcoding
Filtering Work Centers on Sub Factories
Sub Factories
View Work Center Schedule
Capacity By Work Center
See also
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