Shop Floor Reporting and Dashboarding – For Manufacturers

Shop Floor Reporting and Dashboarding

Manufacturers are always looking for ways to save money and increase production efficiency. Fortunately, industry 4.0 technology can help them do just that. One of the best ways is through automated shop floor reporting and dashboarding. 

With this solution, manufacturers get access to real-time data about what’s happening on their production floors. This enables them to make better decisions, solve problems faster, and keep up with complex customer demands. 

In this article, we’ll take a look at why manufacturing companies are turning to digital solutions to help automate their shop floor reporting efforts.

Digitize your production reporting

What is production reporting?

Shop floor reporting refers to the process of collecting and presenting data from manufacturing systems in a way that provides insight into production rates, quality, and efficiency. Shop floor dashboards are visualizations and reports that convey this information in an easy-to-digest format.

 

In recent years, manufacturers have increasingly used shop floors for more than just manufacturing products. In fact, many companies now use their shop floors as an opportunity for innovation by leveraging data collected there for other purposes beyond production—such as product design, customer service calls and customer feedback. Manufacturing companies understand the need for an easy-to-use data collecting and reporting solution to gain a competitive edge.

Benefits of implementing manufacturing reporting

In the past, operators and supervisors in typical industrial settings had to manually enter important parameters and metrics onto a spreadsheet or whiteboard. This approach, however, is not timely and fails to protect the data’s integrity for insightful decision-making. 

So using the right manufacturing reporting tool can hold significant advantages for your production plants operations like: 

#1 Capture accurate real-time data

Most current manufacturing facilities have connected their machines and sensors across the factory floor. As a result, operators rarely need to manually enter data into a system, reducing the chance of human mistake.

So managers and supervisors have access to reliable information for making better insightful decisions and strategic moves. Additionally, automation and dashboarding gives critical workers a glimpse of production activities on the shop floor in real-time, allowing them to efficiently monitor progress over a specified time period toward their target.

 

#2 Meaningful data visualization

Old school data visualization in manufacturing reporting can be tedious and fall short of correctly representing important shop floor data flowing from production processes.

Real-time data monitoring, on the other hand, provides information in a readable, digestible style. It helps operators, managers and supervisors identify problems before they happen. By giving them an accurate picture of what’s happening in their manufacturing facility, they can make decisions based on data rather than guesswork or assumptions.

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#3 Better communication between different departments

Real-time manufacturing reports collect a variety of production data that is useful to various departments and plants within a company.

The more informed everyone is about what’s going on throughout the manufacturing process at any given time — from procurement through production — the better equipped they are to collaborate with each other effectively for maximum productivity across all departments.

 

#4 Improve quality

Companies have to provide high-quality products to keep customers satisfied. So, manufacturers need to include efficient quality control procedures and processes to lower the quantity of rejected and defective goods.

The quality manager can monitor product, machine, and operator behavior that affects a product’s quality during production thanks to real-time production reports that place them directly in the production process.

 

#5 Reduce job costs

Manufacturing companies often have a fixed cost per job. However, It’s difficult to verify job standards against actual shop floor activities. Real-time production reporting can be useful in this situation. It’s easier for manufacturers to determine actual cycle time, run time, down time, setup time and labor hour standards to develop accurate job costs. 

 

Elevate your production reporting

There are many other benefits—such as improving compliance, reducing waste, and boosting visibility into key performance indicators (KPIs)—but we wanted to highlight some of the most powerful features in terms of: 

  • Preventing production interruptions
  • Eliminating paper trails and spreadsheets
  • Optimizing efficiency throughout your facility.

So now that you have a better understanding of the value of shop floor reporting, it’s time to put the theory into practice. Manufacturers can use the Azumuta platform to automate the gathering of data generated by employees, machines, and sensors across their shop floor operations. 

Managers and supervisors can easily display production data into meaningful reports and dashboards to acquire complete production visibility, find useful AI-driven insights, and make proactive choices in real-time.

If you’re interested in learning more about shop floor reporting and dashboarding, you can check out our free trial here or get in touch with one of our experts today.

Remember that even small changes can have a big impact on your success in manufacturing!

Automate your Production Data
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