Organised by process, not by product.
Most firms list the sectors they serve. We find that unhelpful, because two plants making completely different products often share the same operational problem, while two plants in the same sector rarely do. What actually determines how a factory should be digitized is how it makes things.
Why process type matters more than sector.
A pharmaceutical packing line and a consumer electronics line are both discrete, high-changeover operations with serialization requirements — and the systems they need look almost identical. A pharmaceutical reactor and a specialty chemical reactor are both batch processes with recipe control and deviation management, and they need something completely different. Sector is a label. Process type is a design constraint.
Discrete & Assembly
Countable units moving through stations. Automotive and components, consumer durables, electronics, industrial equipment, fabrication and packaging operations.
What defines it. Cycle time is king, changeovers are frequent and expensive, line balance determines throughput, and quality is judged per unit. Traceability runs by serial or batch through a bill of materials.
Where signal dies. Micro-stops nobody records because each one lasts ninety seconds. Changeover time attributed to "setup" with no breakdown. Rework that leaves the line and re-enters it without ever appearing in the yield number.
What we typically build
- Station-level cycle and micro-stop capture
- Changeover tracking with reason breakdown
- Serial and batch genealogy through the BOM
- In-process quality gates with poka-yoke interlocks
- Line balance and bottleneck analysis
- Rework and repair loop visibility
Batch & Formulation
Recipes, reactors and defined quantities. Pharmaceuticals, specialty chemicals, paints and coatings, food and beverage, cosmetics and personal care.
What defines it. The batch is the unit of everything — costing, quality, traceability and release. Recipe adherence and parameter control determine outcome, and deviations require documented investigation before release.
Where signal dies. Parameters logged on paper at intervals rather than continuously, so an excursion between readings is invisible. Yield reconciliation done at month end. Deviation investigations that take weeks because the evidence has to be assembled from four systems.
What we typically build
- Electronic batch records with parameter capture
- Recipe and formulation validation at dispensing
- Continuous parameter monitoring against limits
- Deviation and CAPA workflow with evidence attached
- Yield reconciliation per batch, not per month
- Cleaning and changeover verification
Continuous & Process
Uninterrupted flow, measured by rate. Cement, steel and metals, paper and pulp, glass, textiles, power generation and utilities.
What defines it. The plant runs continuously and a stop is enormously expensive. Energy is a dominant cost. Asset reliability determines output more than labour does, and quality is a property of a stream rather than a unit.
Where signal dies. Enormous volumes of historian data nobody analyses. Energy billed monthly and never allocated to production. Condition monitoring installed on critical assets and reviewed only after a failure.
What we typically build
- Specific energy consumption per tonne or unit
- Utility metering allocated to production lines
- Condition monitoring with actionable thresholds
- Rate, yield and quality stream analytics
- Shutdown and startup sequence management
- Emissions and environmental compliance records
Regulated & Validated
A layer that sits across the other three. Pharmaceuticals, medical devices, aerospace, food safety, and any operation subject to customer or regulatory audit.
What defines it. The record is the product. Every entry needs attribution, a timestamp and an audit trail; changes need to be traceable; and systems themselves need qualification. Audit readiness is continuous rather than periodic.
Where signal dies. Compliance evidence assembled in a panic before an audit rather than generated as a by-product of normal work. Paper records that satisfy the letter of a requirement while telling nobody anything useful.
What we typically build
- Attributable, timestamped electronic records
- Audit trails on every change, with reason capture
- Electronic signature and approval workflows
- Training and certification linked to task authorisation
- Continuous audit-readiness reporting
- Documentation supporting system qualification
Most do. A pharmaceutical site typically runs batch manufacturing feeding a discrete packing hall, under a regulated layer covering both. That combination is normal, and it is the reason we design the operational core first — so two quite different process worlds can still share one definition of a lot, a shift and a deviation.
Start with the audit, not the software.
A fixed-scope engagement. We walk your floor, map where data breaks down, and hand you a costed roadmap — whether or not you build any of it with us.