Software that knows what the floor does.
In most manufacturing companies the office only learns at the end of the week what was actually made. The planning hangs on a wall or lives in Excel, the machines keep their own data and the ERP only knows what was purchased and invoiced.
We build the part in between: work orders on a screen at the machine, progress that flows back to the office by itself, and stock that adds up without someone updating a list in the evening.
The floor knows, the office hears on Friday.
In many production companies the truth lives in two places. On the floor the operators know exactly which order ran badly, which machine stuttered and where the changeover went wrong. In the office sits an ERP that knows what was purchased and invoiced, and nothing else.
Between the two is a gap filled with paper, Excel and memory. So the costing is never quite right, you only learn afterwards which order lost money, and you cannot tell a customer which batch went into their delivery without an afternoon of searching.
A third of your margin sits in what nobody wrote down.
Then there is the dependency. If you are tied to your ERP, every change goes through the vendor, at their rate and on their schedule. A wish that is an afternoon of work on the floor sits in a queue for half a year. So we build that floor layer separately: it runs on your servers, it is in your name and it can be changed without anyone else giving permission.
That gap grows more expensive as the labour shortage persists: 84 per cent of Dutch manufacturers still struggle with it. If you cannot add people, the work itself has to get lighter. So we build that middle layer rather than stacking another package on top.
What we build for production.
Usually not a new ERP, but the layer between the floor and the office. That layer often does not exist yet, and that is exactly where the manual work sits.
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Work orders on the floor
A screen at the machine with the order, the drawing and the steps. The operator reports done, rejects a part or flags a problem, and the office sees it immediately. Big buttons, usable with gloves on.
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Planning you can drag
A board with the orders, the machines and the capacity. Move an order and you see straight away what it means later in the week. Your planner's rules are in there, because those rules are usually right.
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Reading machine data
Running hours, downtime and counts straight from the controller or from a sensor fitted to it. Even a thirty-year-old machine park becomes visible this way, without changing anything about the machine itself.
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Stock and materials
What is there, what is reserved and what needs ordering, updated by the work itself instead of by a count afterwards. With scanners in the places where speed really matters.
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Quality and traceability
Inspections, measurements and certificates recorded against the order they belong to. After a complaint you find the batch, the machine and the operator in a minute, with the documents attached.
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An order portal for customers
Your buyer places an order, sees the status and downloads their packing slips and certificates themselves. That saves your inside sales the question of where order 4412 is, twice a day.
Four things we see a lot here.
Dutch manufacturers are under pressure from costs, staff shortages and competition. What we run into is rarely about machines and almost always about what never got written down.
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Paper work orders
The order goes to the floor as a printout, comes back with pencil notes and gets retyped in the evening. What was rejected or re-set in between is recorded nowhere, so the costing is never quite right.
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The planning lives in one head
There is a planner who knows exactly which order fits which machine and what you should never run back to back. If that planning is not written down anywhere, the factory stalls the moment they take two weeks off.
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Machines do not talk to the office
The controller knows what is running, the ERP knows what was sold, and there is nothing in between. You notice downtime when someone calls, and answering how much you actually made last month costs an afternoon.
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Customers ask about traceability
Which batch went into that order, who inspected it, which certificates belong to it. It can be answered, but it costs half a day in binders and mailboxes, and after a complaint it has to be there the same day.
How we usually start here.
With safety shoes on. A day on the floor delivers more than three meetings about a functional design.
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Follow one order
We track a single order from arrival to shipping and write down every point where someone retypes, searches or asks around. That is the shortlist.
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One workstation first
We usually start at one department or one machine, with a screen that is genuinely in use a few weeks later. If it works there, we also learn what needs to be different elsewhere.
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Roll out at your pace
After that we extend to the rest of the floor, in short rounds, with a pause when the season demands it. Production sets the tempo, not our planning.
What it connects to.
What is there stays there. We connect to the ERP, the controllers and the bookkeeping, and only add what is missing.
Even when a package is old or the vendor is unhelpful, there is almost always a way in: an API, the database, or an export that already runs every night.
- SAP S/4HANA Fetch work orders without having to build inside SAP itself.
- Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sync orders and articles through the standard API.
- Infor Common at larger manufacturers; we connect via their web services.
- Isah Common in manufacturing; we connect via the database.
- Ridder iQ Read costings and orders for your planning board.
- AFAS Pull production orders and send completions back.
- Exact Update stock and purchasing straight from the floor.
- Siemens Teamcenter Land drawings and revisions on the right order.
- SCADA / PLC Read along with the controller and write nothing back.
- OPC UA The proper route for reading machine data.
- Ultimo Tie maintenance reports to the machine that stopped.
- Barcode scanners Scan materials and orders at the workstation itself.
- Weighbridges Tie weights directly to an order or batch.
- Peppol E-invoices to buyers who insist on them.
Does your floor run on something else?
Fine. With controllers and older packages there is nearly always a way in, even if it is a sensor on the machine. Name the make and model and we usually know straight away.
Questions from this sector.
If your question is not here, give us a call. You get someone who has stood on a production floor.
Book a callWe already have an ERP. What do you add?
The part your ERP was never meant for: the floor. An ERP is strong at purchasing, orders and invoices and weak at what happens at a machine between eight and five. We build that layer on top and feed it back, so your costing adds up without double work.
Our machines are old. Can we get data out of them?
Usually yes. If the controller has no connection, you can often still read counts through a separate sensor fitted to the machine. We start with one machine to see what the data is worth before you equip ten.
Does a screen like that work in a dusty or wet environment?
Yes, provided you pick the right hardware. We build the software to run on an industrial panel, a tablet in a case or simply in a browser. We keep the controls coarse enough for work gloves.
How long does this take?
A first working piece is usually on the floor within six to ten weeks. The whole is never finished, because new wishes keep arriving. That is the point: you start small and extend with what turns out to work.
Can you help with subsidy applications?
We do not write them, but we do supply the technical substantiation an adviser needs. For the Dutch WBSO scheme that is mostly a description of the development work, which we draw up together with you.