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Task management for a manufacturing company

A factory does not run on projects. It runs on a few hundred recurring obligations, a handful of things that pass through several hands, and a constant stream of problems that have to be closed and evidenced.

What generic tools get wrong

• They assume work is one-off. Most factory work is not. Calibration, preventive maintenance, PDI checks, internal audits, stock reconciliation — these repeat forever, and a tool where somebody has to remember to create next month's is a tool that fails in month three.
• They have no concept of sign-off. "Done" ticked by the person who did it is not how a quality system works. Somebody has to verify.
• They cannot express a handover. Design, then fabricate, then trial, then train — four owners, four dates, each one unable to start until the one before finishes.
• They produce no evidence. At audit time you need to show when something was raised, who closed it and when. A board of coloured cards does not.

What a factory actually needs

Recurring work that survives being forgotten

Daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly. The next occurrence should be created on a schedule, not only when somebody closes the last one — otherwise one missed calibration quietly ends the series, and nobody notices until the auditor does.

Multi-stage jobs with a deadline per stage

A fixture upgrade is design (5 days) → fabricate and trial (15 days) → train the operators (10 days), with three different owners. Each stage opens when the one before it is signed off, and the person it lands on is told. If fabrication overruns, training's deadline moves with it — the trainer should not be marked down for a delay upstream of them.

Blockers that are visible

Rejection analysis cannot start until the vendor audit is finished. Saying so in the system means the rejection task is not sitting in somebody's to-do list accusing them of being slow.

A record that stands up at audit

Every status change, approval, rejection reason and date change kept with a timestamp and a name against it.

Categories that match a plant

NPD, PQC, PDI, IQC, maintenance, production plan, purchase, supplier, SCM, inventory plan, systems — out of the box, and editable, because every plant names these slightly differently.