Shop Floor Digitization
Ten operating functions running as one connected system, on a single operational record — so the plant stops keeping ten different versions of the truth.
What is shop floor digitization?
Shop floor digitization replaces paper forms, whiteboards and private spreadsheets with digital workflows that capture production, quality, maintenance, safety and material events at the moment and place they happen. The result is one operational record the whole plant works from, rather than numbers reconstructed after the shift has ended.
Every function keeps its own version of the truth.
Production has a board. Quality has a register. Maintenance has a logbook. Stores has a different logbook. Each one is maintained honestly and none of them agree, because they were never designed to be the same record. Reconciling them is somebody's whole job.
Captured after the fact
A downtime event gets a reason code the next morning, chosen by someone who wasn't there, from a list that hasn't been reviewed in three years.
Owned by one person
The critical spreadsheet lives on a supervisor's machine. It works because they maintain it. It stops working the week they take leave.
Invisible until month end
Nobody knows the line missed plan until the review deck is assembled. By then the shift that could have recovered it was eleven days ago.
The ten functions we digitize.
Each one is a working system in its own right. The value comes from all of them writing to the same record, so a quality escape can be traced to a machine, a shift, an operator and a supplier lot without anyone opening a spreadsheet.
Production & throughput
Output, plan versus actual, cycle time, downtime reason and changeover captured at source. Supervisors see the line as it runs.
Quality & compliance
Digital inspection plans, in-process checks, non-conformance capture and CAPA closure, caught at the station that caused it.
Maintenance & reliability
Preventive schedules, breakdown logging, spares consumption and machine history in one place.
Safety & EHS
Permits to work, incident and near-miss reporting, hazard registers and observations, evidenced continuously.
Utilities, energy & ESG
Power, air, water and steam metered against production output rather than arriving as a monthly bill.
Traceability & genealogy
A searchable thread from material receipt to the pallet that left your gate, in both directions.
Warehouse & supply chain
Plans, orders and actual consumption reconciled against what the floor really produced.
Procurement & supplier
Supplier quality, audits and risk as a running relationship, linked to the problems they caused.
Workforce & skills
Attendance, shift allocation and skill matrices connected to the lines people actually run.
Control tower & reviews
One live view across all of the above, with exceptions surfaced against an owner and a clock.
Platform or bespoke, decided on your process.
There is no single right answer to this and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. Some plants are well served by a proven manufacturing platform configured properly. Others have a process no product on the market models, and configuring around it produces something everyone quietly works around.
We make that call per function, not per plant. It is common to end up with a platform covering seven functions and bespoke software covering three, integrated so the floor never knows the difference.
When a platform fits
Configured against your actual routing, shift pattern and approval chain — not the demo configuration.
When nothing fits
Bespoke workflows for the process that is genuinely yours, on a data model designed to integrate.
One function at a time
Sequenced so each release earns its keep before the next begins. No eighteen-month wait for a first result.
Common questions.
Only if it is designed for the conditions they work in. Gloved hands, poor lighting, a two-minute window between cycles, and often a shared terminal rather than a personal device. We design entry screens against those constraints from the first sketch, and we test them on the line before go-live rather than after.
No, and we would advise against trying at once. Most programs start with two or three where the losses are largest and the data is easiest to capture — usually production and quality. The connected record matters more than the count of functions live on day one.
Historical records stay as they are; we do not retrospectively digitize archives unless there is a compliance reason and a clear payback. What changes is everything from go-live forward. For regulated environments we design the electronic record to satisfy your audit requirements from the first entry.
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.