Why Your Actual Changeover Duration and Changeover Dispatch Time are Different

When using product orders in Leading2Lean's Production Module, you have the ability to set a Changeover Dispatch Type under which to gather information on the changeover and setup activities for any given order (Production > Settings). This means that when you select "Start Changeover" for a product order build sequence in the Operator Portal, L2L launches a Dispatch of the designated type that is available on the Main Dispatch screen. Having this dispatch launch can be valuable if you're looking to understand and record different aspects of the changeover, such as the resources who worked on it, what tooling may have been placed on or removed from a machine during that time, or that a checklist of setup tasks was performed.  you want to record in both the Dispatch History and Production Reports.

However, if you are using this "Changeover Dispatch Type" setting, you may have seen at one time or another in your site that times of the Product Order build sequence "Changeover Duration (Actual)" value and the total time for the corresponding changeover "Setup" dispatch can be different. This can occur because the "Changeover Duration (Actual)" time is calculated as time between "Start Changeover" being selected for the sequence in the Operator Portal and "Finish Changeover" being selected for the sequence in the Operator Portal, or the current time if the changeover is not yet completed. Therefore, if the changeover dispatch is being closed out at a different time that "Finish Changeover" is being selected for the corresponding Order build sequence in the Operator Portal, you end up with a discrepancy between the dispatch duration and the Product Order build sequence "Changeover Duration (Actual)".

There are a ways, fortunately, to avoid something like happening. You can remove any specified dispatch type from the Production Setting for "Changeover Dispatch Type" and just leave it blank; however, the consequence of this is that you don't have a dispatch being created in the background, so any of the additional data capture you might be gathering there is no longer possible for any reporting needs. The actual changeover minutes, though, should still show up in the Production reports like Daily Production Summary. If you do want to retain the "Changeover Dispatch Type" setting, you can also modify a few other settings to help keep users from inadvertently accessing or closing those changeover dispatches. As a reminder for users responding to or documenting information in these dispatches, you could add an "Ask on Close" dispatch question such dispatches that could prompt/remind someone to not select "Closed" and allow dispatch closure to be driven from the Operator Portal. To minimize access to the changeover dispatches overall, they can also be removed from the Operator Portal > Open Dispatches list via the Default filter for selection of the open dispatches in operator portal. Similarly, the Dispatch Type Filer on the Main Dispatch screen can be used to sort out the changeover dispatch types.