I work in the sign department of a larger construction facility. We have been using Trello (just our shop) for the past 6 years as a production board. We use a single board with multiple cards for each step of the process < New Work, Recon, Estimates, Pending, PrePress, Production, Installation, Competed > This has worked great up to this point.
Recently, management has requested every shop start filling out an Excel sheet with all of their jobs, start and end times, and completion dates. This is to be an up-to-date sheet. I now find myself sitting in front of the computer more just moving cards in Trello so the crew has a "timed" schedule to follow as there are multiple parts to each job, and each job only has one card.
We tried changing the board to be a Monday - Friday list of cards but that still requires me to sit and move each card daily, multiple times, as well as set a new scheduled time for that card to be worked on. This limits my time to do recons and estimates which is how all jobs get moved into production.
Previously we did not have to have a set time as each crew member knew to work on the cards in their list from top to bottom. Then they would move the card to the next step. With this new addition of having to have exact time schedules for each part of every job, makes it a full time job just updating Trello and the Excel sheet. (for those who don't know, sign production consist of multiple steps with dry times, prep in between...you can not productively work on one job start to finish and will jump from job to job throughout the day)
Since we are the only department that uses Trello, the company has no interest in upgrading to a premium account to use more robust power-ups/automation.
Any suggestions on how I can set up an entire week or two with time scheduled jobs without the all day updating by one person, while still using a single card per job?
I thought about using multiple boards, one for each employee, but to mirror/clone/sync cards across boards, you have to pay for a powerup, which will not get approved. And having multiple copies of cards with different notes and information would just cause a mess.
Before, all employees would update, make notes, move cards, and schedule their own time. This worked great and has kept our shop very productive and moving forward. Now they are all dependent on one person moving, updating, and scheduling daily.
I would love to hear any suggestions or ideas. It might be really simple and my brain just can't grasp it yet.
Thanks for reading.
