“Manufacturing” module
The shop floor scans. The system calculates.
You plan against actual stock, operators record the steps with a barcode scanner, and on completion the system issues the documents and calculates what each product costs.
Sound familiar?
Three questions the shop floor has to answer
What does one product cost us?
The cost is calculated on every completion – from the materials consumed, the additional resources and the scrap – and updates the item’s base price.
Do we have the material for this order?
The request is broken down to raw materials and compared with what is in stock. If there is an actual shortage, you get a notification before the work has started.
How far has the order got?
Every scanned step is recorded with its time. The first scan marks the start of the job, and the dashboard shows what remains.
1 · The recipe
You describe the product once
A production cycle is a reusable recipe: what goes in, which steps are carried out and what comes out. One cycle can have several outputs – a main product and an offcut, for example.
- Consumption rate as a fraction, a percentage or “once per n products” – accurate to the eighth decimal place
- Additional resources – electricity, water, labour – with a price per cycle
- For every output: scrap percentage, serial number, expiry date, diagrams with measurements
- A cycle that has been used is locked – the documents already issued preserve the history
2 · Planning
One request – the whole plan
You request an item and a quantity. The system picks the recipe, breaks the requirements down to raw materials and deducts what is in stock. Missing components that have a recipe of their own become additional jobs in the same request.
- Stock on hand is deducted once, even when a component appears in several places
- For purchased materials – a notification only on an actual shortage
- Manual pool: you pick cycles and chains and arrange them by dragging
- Optionally, the request is created automatically – from the customer’s order
3 · Execution
A job card with a barcode for every step
A card is printed for every job: what goes in, what comes out and what the steps are. The operator scans the step’s barcode and the step is recorded – with the exact time.
- Code128 barcodes – for the job and for every step
- Works with an ordinary barcode scanner or with manual entry
- A wrong or repeated code does not stop the work – the line supervisor gets a notification
- The steps already recorded are marked on the card
4 · Completion and cost
The documents are issued automatically. The cost is the actual cost.
The supervisor ticks the jobs that are done and presses “Complete selected”. The system issues the inventory documents, records the serial numbers and allocates the cost between the outputs – by quantity and weighting. Which documents are issued is set in the production settings; the usual set-up is this:
- If inputs are short, completion does not stop – a warning and a notification are raised
- A job cannot be completed twice
Tool health
Wear accumulates with every run – per serial number or in total. The dashboard shows how much service life remains.
Reverse production and chains
The system also supports the reverse route – disassembling or unbundling a product into its component parts.
- Predefined chains – sequential or parallel cycles for complex products
- The pool is sorted in order of execution – the deepest prerequisite comes first
- An inactive cycle is neither requested nor executed; jobs already queued are still completed
Honestly
What exists today and what is to come
The statuses follow the functional specification – with the changes since version 1.1.
| Feature | Status |
|---|---|
| Recipes with steps, inputs, resources and outputs | built |
| Request breakdown to raw materials | built |
| Job card and scanning by job | built |
| Documents, serial numbers and cost on completion | built |
| Automatic production request from a document | built |
| Purchase order to the main supplier for the missing materialscreated automatically, when enabled | built |
| Creating cycles from a template | planned |
| Measurements shown on the diagram | planned |
Works together with
Manufacturing is not an island
Inventory
The dashboard and planning use the same stock formula as the inventory reports.
View modulePurchasing
The order for the missing material is tracked against its deadline, and you get a notification if it is delayed.
View moduleSales
The customer’s order can create the production request by itself.
View moduleRun a job in the demo environment
Request 14 days of access and follow the path from request to cost with sample data.