We’ve been working hard behind the scenes to make sure that you get the best possible experience from Herbst Insight, and listening to our customers is a vital part of taking the business forward in the right direction. As part of our philosophy we are committed to finding new ways of empowering individuals to do their job as effectively and efficiently as possible, and these latest features go a long way in ensuring that goal.
Users now have the facility to configure which orders can be seen and which of them can be processed on each of the kiosks for Goods In, Production, and Dispatch. We often assume that only today’s orders should be available for processing, but this is not always the case as previous orders and sometimes future orders need to be processed due to delays or various other reasons.
You can now set the min/max number of days in the past or future in which orders are allowed to be processed on the Kiosk and how those orders should be treated. This means you can allow/disallow documents with a date outside of your current schedule and documents with no scheduled date, allowing you to have greater control over day to day operations.
We’ve made changes to the driver kiosk in order to make it a quicker and more efficient experience for drivers while simultaneously offering more control for back office staff.
Improved remote control of Kiosk – Now, changing the Kiosk settings is performed in the office rather than going to the individual kiosk and changes take place immediately. In addition, Some/all kiosks can now be taken out of service remotely.
Auto weigh – When turned on, weighing starts automatically once a driver reaches the Weighing screen.
Faster comment entry – Typically there are standard comments that the driver would enter following a successful transaction. Instead of the driver typing them in each time, the comments can now be selected for a list of possible templates.
Convert ticket to delivery docket – The system will now convert a completed Ticket Out Sale to a Delivery Docket automatically when the Goods Out transaction is completed. This can then be Pushed to the Herbst trucker ePOD application to be delivered and signed for electronically on site. This means you can adopt a completely electronic and paperless approach.
“Reprint last document” redesign – This utility is intended to be used when there is a problem with the printer in the kiosk. It allows a driver to finish the transaction and leave the premises without intervention from the office. It is now restricted to the depot (and driver) and refers to the last document created in the depot (by the driver). This can also now be restricted in terms of time e.g. if the driver has to change the paper, if the next kiosk is situated at a distance, if the driver has to wait.
We know how busy a factory floor/warehouse environment can get, and we’ve made changes to facilitate this and provide more control over Jobs in Dispatch, goods In, production and stock take.
Users with the correct privileges can now release jobs, transfer jobs to other users, take over jobs and delete jobs on the kiosk. This means more efficient management of jobs in environments where staff changes might take place at various times and the ability to control jobs on the factory floor is needed.
Multiple jobs can be selected for release or transfer and reasons can be given for making these changes. A complete log of job transfer history is also kept on the system for senior management.
Our kiosks are now depot dependent.
The location availability matrix allows you to define the relationship between a depot/location (Which locations are part of a depot) and which locations are available for use on the kiosk in that depot.
Users can set locations that are available on each kiosk. This means that a product’s default location may deem it unavailable on certain kiosks. This stops issues such as products being sent to or received from the wrong locations being processed and causing further issues down the line.
This is a brand new kiosk that has been developed to allow users to choose a location and manage batches (Batch details) and give the ability to split batches while on the factory floor, without intervention from the back office.
Batch details – This allows users to work on existing batches and perform a number of different actions such as printing labels, setting the status of the batch (usable/unusable), setting user fields and setting dates.
Batch split – This utility allows users to extract / split a batch into several smaller batches of different quantities e.g. if a frozen quantity of meat is required, but not the entire batch is required. The remaining quantity can be moved to another batch. The same changes that can be made on batch details can be made here, for both the source and destination batches.
It is now possible to add the same product / product batch to both the Destination items of a Product Converter and the Source Items of the same Product Converter. This can be very useful in scenarios where the finished product is defective in some way and can be used in another batch, where the product can be used as an ingredient in the production of another product or where there is a need to reprocess/rework some of the finished product.
This is also available while using insight on a PC.
We’ve been working on making the kiosks a much faster and more intuitive experience with a number of new ways to improve the speed in which you can get tasks completed.
New “Append” and “Find and Append” mode – In previous versions, data entry was driven by scanning product barcodes, this is no longer the case. Users can now enter the batch number, quantity, and all other required fields simply by clicking the + button on the kiosk or by pressing the Plus key or the Space key on a physical keyboard. The directional arrows can be used to move up and down lists of products and this makes for a more natural workflow that greatly improves the speed of work on the Kiosk.
“Find and append” allows you to select a job item in case multiple ones are used for the same product. For example a product code can be searched and if only one line exists in the jobs with that product code, that product is deemed as identified and the user is prompted to enter batch / quantity. If multiple lines exist in the job with that product code, the user is required to select a line to work with and only then can the job move forward. These features are also available for batches.
Button captions have been replaced with Icons and regrouped across the kiosks allowing for a more user friendly experience. These features will further simplify and improve the speed of your operations.
Check out our video below to see how Loughnane’s have implemented our driver kiosk and how it has helped them save valuable time for drivers allowing them to increase their productivity.
The facility to clone batches has been implemented across the kiosks. This speeds up the process of adding batches, as date values and userfield values are also cloned. When the batch clone function is activated, the batch number and quantity is requested and when on the batch details screen the user now has the opportunity to set date fields, the status field(usable/unusable) and print labels.
“Box as batch” is supported across all of our Kiosks and allows users to treat each box of a product as a unique batch. This allows for several boxes to be received in one goods In purchase, and generates a batch per box with an average quantity calculated by the quantity divided by the number of boxes in. The same mechanism can be used for goods out Sale. Alternatively, actual weights of each Box rather than average values can be entered. This gives the ability to generate a quantity automatically from scanning a batch number as opposed to manually entering this information.
On consumption (and dispatch in some cases), boxes will normally be used in full and according to the weights as determined previously. If the Part Box option is used, the same Box can be consumed multiple times within the same or different jobs
New settings have been implemented to control how products or product batches with a negative quantity in the selected location are handled on the Kiosk.
There are now 3 actions you can take when a product has a negative quantity in a selected location
On the kiosks, variances in quantities are highlighted in yellow (warning) and red (forbidden) and a “before” and “after” quantity is given for that stock location. This allows you to have greater control over stock locations while reducing the amount of errors and mistakes that can be made.
The extra unit of measure solves an issue in the goods in and production kiosk whereby a product may be received in an irregular unit of measure, for which a regular unit of measure cannot be defined.
For example, when buying cheese the BMU (base measurement unit) may be Kg, but it is received as blocks of approximately the same weight. As it is not practical to weigh them as they are picked for use in production, the system allows you to count the number of blocks and calculate their weight using the average weight per block as it was registered at Goods In. The product is batched, so the average weight per block varies from batch to batch. This feature can help eradicate mistakes and speed up a lengthy and often manual process.
Other new features!
We hope you enjoy our latest release and find something that you can apply to your day-to-day to make your life that little bit easier. Whether it is one of our Kiosk updates or one of our simple changes to insight, we want to improve operations across the business whether you are in the back office or on the factory floor.
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sales@herbst.ie
+353 (0)1 450 9329
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+353 (0)1 450 9329
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