Digital Shop Floor Management in Production
Shop floor management is a popular system of management practices from the Toyota Production System, which many companies use to address and solve problems more directly. However, in many cases, there is a lack of a solid data foundation upon which problems can be identified and improvement processes initiated. Often, data must be painstakingly compiled from various sources and prepared for meetings. The solution to this is an integrated Manufacturing Execution System (MES), which manages orders and capacities as well as real-time data from Machine Data Collection (MDE) and Business Data Collection (BDE), and calculates all relevant key performance indicators in real time. These live key performance indicators are displayed on a shop floor management board, providing participants in the shop floor meeting with a precise overview of the events in the production process.
What is Shop Floor Management?
The core principle of shop floor management is the management of production at the place of value creation, literally on the factory floor or “shop floor.” This method is typically practiced in daily shop floor meetings, where current orders, order progress, and current production performance and quality are discussed. Existing problems and proposed improvements are also discussed, decided upon, documented, and their progress tracked. Shop floor management enables better transparency for all involved and a shortening of the PDCA-cycle.
Digital Shop Floor Management
The starting point of any targeted improvement process is a solid data foundation, which allows for the identification of necessary actions and the definition of target values. If a production operates without networking the involved machines, the required data must be roughly estimated based on completed orders and compiled from various sources, with an employee tasked with entering data into an Excel tool in preparation for the shop floor meeting.
A more accurate and complete data foundation can be established with a Manufacturing Execution System (MES), which receives all data related to the production process from machine data collection (MDE) or business data collection (BDE) and stores it in a data warehouse. This allows for the capture of disturbances down to the second and the assignment of produced parts to the correct time period and machine. From this, any number of metrics and KPIs can be calculated in real time. These metrics are then used for the shop floor meetings. For each production area, a dashboard or shop floor management board can be defined, which displays the individually relevant metrics in real time.
Thus, digital shop floor management eliminates the daily effort of compiling data and increases the accuracy of the displayed metrics. Based on this data foundation, not only can thresholds be defined that necessitate intervention, but clear goals can also be set to strive for.
Digital Shopfloor Management by Selfbits
Our product and service portfolio includes all the components you need to digitally organize your shop floor management.
We integrate your machines into overarching systems, either by accessing existing interfaces or by retrofitting data collection capabilities to your equipment.
The Selfbits Manufacturing Suite, as a Manufacturing Execution System (MES), provides a data warehouse where the collected data is aggregated and stored. In real-time, the SMS determines KPIs such as OEE and displays them to users.
Finally, we create a customized shop floor management board for you, displaying the key metrics that matter to you and that you want to discuss in your shop floor meetings.
What metrics are relevant to you? Where do you get your data for the shop floor meeting? Start your digital shop floor management today and contact us.
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