Drone Production Tracking by Stage: Where Every Unit Is and Why Three Are Stuck

The company is fictional. Every action in Bimp is a real product feature. The figures in the example are invented, and the manufacturer matches no real enterprise.

Drone production tracking by stage requires every unit to have its own document with a serial number, stages and a responsible person for each stage. In Bimp this is a production task: the stage status shows where the drone is, and a change of status accrues piecework pay and posts a semi-finished or finished product on its own.

A notional situation. Seventeen of the twenty antenna modules for the batch have arrived. Three drones stand at the soldering station, but the shop learns the reason two days later, when the production manager walks the floor. By then three technicians have moved on to something else.

Why does the production manager piece the shop floor together from conversations?

Flightline Works (a fictional company) builds UAVs in serial batches of twenty. The staff is about 60 people. Every drone passes four stages: board soldering, frame assembly, setup and a test flight. A separate technician works at each stage, and the components come from several suppliers.

Every morning the production manager collects the state of the batch from conversations at the stations. Piecework pay is counted in a spreadsheet, and a batch takes about two working days (notionally). The antenna shortage is discovered when it is too late to buy more by Monday.

How do you track drone production by stage in Bimp?

The scenario has seven steps. A help link sits next to each.

Step 1. Stages, statuses and rates. Create production stages, production statuses and accrual types in the catalogs. Add your own status “Waiting for materials” next to the standard ones (“Waiting”, “In progress”, “Paused”, “Completed”, “Semi-finished”, “Product”). A new status is created inactive, so turn it on and mark it for the production task, otherwise it will not appear in the list. Rates are set with accrual types: board soldering €6, frame assembly €10, setup €8, test flight €4. Each technician is linked to their own accrual type in the employee card (Production tasks, Accrual types).

Step 2. The drone specification. In the specification turn on “Use stages and operations” and the semi-finished goods option. After soldering the board becomes a separate accounting unit, and the specification gets a semi-finished product “Soldered board”. Materials are tied to stages, so each stage writes off what it needs.

Step 3. The batch is split into units. A production order for twenty drones is created in the “Production” section. The Create batches button splits the products into rows of one piece, and each gets its own batch and serial number. On the “Materials” tab you check the reserve and fill it by batches (Production order, Reserve materials).

Step 4. Production tasks, one per drone. The Create based on button in the production order creates production tasks, one per series. Do not select rows for the whole batch. To launch only ten drones, select those ten. The rule “one task, one series” keeps the history of a drone separate: materials, component batches and stages are tied to its number.

Step 5. A status with a reason. There are seventeen antennas, so three tasks get the status “Waiting for materials”. It is visible in the task journal, and the antennas are bought before anyone reaches soldering. The journal is grouped by customer order with its number and priority (high, medium, low). The task card holds the stages, the performers and the components.

Step 6. Stages move through statuses. “In progress” records the start time of a stage, and “Paused” stops the work and keeps the materials reserved. When the technician finishes a stage, the status “Completed”, “Semi-finished” or “Product” (at the last stage) closes it. Start and finish dates are entered in ascending order, because a stage cannot start before the previous one finishes.

Step 7. Replacing a defective part. A radio module turns out to be defective after soldering. In the “Component” side panel you click “Repair”, choose the replacement part and name the responsible person. The new part is written off from stock, the old one returns to stock at its original cost, and the cost of the repair work is added to the cost of the drone (Replacing a component). The series of the drone does not change, and its history is preserved.

What changes when components arrive in different batches?

Antenna modules, radio modules and boards are bought from several suppliers, and component batches differ. The reserve in the production order is filled by batches, so every production task holds a specific batch of each part. If a radio module from one batch proves defective, the card of every task shows which batches the drone was built from, and the check is made by series.

No separate spreadsheets are needed for this. The drone series, the batches of its components and the history of its stages are stored in one task. When a part is replaced, the new batch is recorded in the same document and the old one returns to stock.

What does the production manager see in the morning?

He opens the task journal and sees where every drone is, who works on it and what waits for materials. The “Production Progress” report shows, per order, how much was ordered, produced and shipped to the customer (report). The sales manager looks into it before naming a ship date to the customer. Every status change stays on the “Change history” tab with the time and the author, so the question of who paused a drone and when is answered in the task itself.

The reason for the standstill is named, so the antennas are bought the same day. The production manager changes the sequence: the technicians who waited on three drones take the next tasks from the journal, and the idle time of the station shrinks to the delivery time of the antennas. An evening check of the journal shows whether every task has a responsible person at its current stage. The three modules arrive, the status changes to “In progress” and soldering starts.

How is piecework pay calculated for a batch?

Piecework pay per drone is the sum of the rates of all stages: 6 + 10 + 8 + 4 = €28. For a batch of twenty that is 28 × 20 = €560.

Column check: 120 + 200 + 160 + 80 = €560.

Piecework pay is accrued to the responsible person at the moment the stage is completed, at the rate of their operation (Piecework pay). The status “Semi-finished” at the soldering stage creates the assembly of the board, which goes to the producing warehouse. The soldering materials are written off to the board and disappear from the task’s component list, leaving only the materials of the next stages. Piecework pay for soldering is not part of the board’s cost: it builds up on the task and passes in full into the cost of the finished drone. The status “Product” at the last stage posts the drone and records the actual completion date (Assembly).

What does this give the company?

The production manager answers “where is each product stuck” in a few minutes. The buyer sees three drones and the reason for the standstill, so the shortage is closed before the station stops. Two days of manual piecework counting per batch (notionally) go back to work.

The sales manager names the ship date from a report instead of a verbal answer from the shop floor. The owner sees what a drone costs: materials by stage, piecework pay for all four operations and the cost of repairs all land in one cost of the finished product.

For a manufacturer with a long process chain this adds one more thing. A serial number per drone and the history of status changes leave a trace of every operation: which technician worked, when and at which stage. For the wider picture of drone production, see the guide UAV Manufacturing Software: The Complete Guide to Drone Production Management, BOM Control, and Cost Tracking.

Scenario limits

The scenario shows staged production of one product from a specification. Bimp is a cloud ERP for manufacturers, built in Ukraine, and production tasks are part of it. The status “Waiting for materials” is set by a person, and the system does not set it on its own. Bimp does not forecast component shortages, but the reserve by batches shows what is enough for an order and what is not. Tasks can only be canceled, so check the batches and the reserve before creating them. Some help articles on production tasks carry a verification status, so check the status and button names against your version.

Manufacturers without stages can use a shorter path through the production order and assembly. For an overview of the stage tracking features, see the Bimp for manufacturers page.

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