Batch records, calibrations, and recipe management are all used by shop floor management software to keep track of production data and paperwork. This form of demand planning software, also known as shop floor management software, automates visual scheduling and allows you to manage shop floor activities, including production statistics, standard operating procedures (SOPs), change controls, quality control, traceability, and more. This visual front-end gives manufacturers more control over their performance.
15 Best Shop Floor Management Software in 2022
Your plant floor will be able to keep you better-informed thanks to real-time access to shop floor operations when connected to a manufacturing execution system (MES software). Identifying production flaws, SPC data, inventory changes, downtime reporting, label printing, and work order information are all part of this process, as is label printing and work order information. People who work on the shop floor can be managed, and you can see what tasks are coming up on the next manufacturing order.
You can also move tasks around based on priority, track time spent on each phase of the work order, and more by integrating shop floor management features with your material resource planning (MRP) software. Tasks can be sent to the right employees for audits or inspections that may be necessary before finishing key projects using equipment calibration.
Shop Floor Management Software Features
- Monitoring Production: Keep an eye on production performance and look for inefficiencies. Define each item’s or tooling configuration’s performance and measurement parameters.
- Get job-specific information or an overview of the entire work center’s performance. Break down production feedback into total parts made, production time, downtime, scrap, rejections, and components that haven’t been made yet, among other things, so you can figure out what went wrong.
- Production Planning: Find out how many resources and how much space you need on your shop floor to complete a manufacturing production order. To finish and optimize production, make a very detailed master production schedule that takes into account resource, manpower, and inventory needs.
- Inventory management is the process of allocating raw materials to production orders and finished goods to sales orders to keep track of finished goods and raw materials.
- Move merchandise from one spot to another as needed. The “Bill of Ingredients” (BOM) lists the raw materials, components, and sub-assemblies required to make each product.
- Automate inventory modifications and assist in the calculation of production costs. Create to-do lists and allocate tasks to different departments or individual employees. Give complete visibility into the project lifecycle and who is responsible at each stage of the way within a manufacturing work order to save time and resources.
Shop Floor Management Software’s Advantages
The following are some of the major features and benefits of shop floor management software:
Control and lower manufacturing costs
Manufacturing production systems, such as shop floor management software, are only as good as the data they’re given. Older systems needed a lot of manual data entry, so the solution would only be useful to your company if you could type in data fast. Automation features in newer systems tend to solve these problems, which means your employees will spend less time entering data and finding ways to improve productivity.
Time spent on lucrative activities (such as core manufacturing tasks) results in higher earnings and lower expenditures spent on non-profitable activities (also known as overhead costs). When your manufacturing business operations are running at peak efficiency, you’ll be able to satisfy orders faster, which means more business and repeat business.
Create “What If” scenarios for analysis
Manufacturing managers may use what-if scenarios to assess and visualize production schedule outcomes and seek possible interruptions. Lack of supply is an example of disruption, which means the scenarios look at inventory management, facility capacity, and your complete supply chain. When production schedules may be viewed before being applied, you’ll be able to test our different factors and pick the optimal production scheduling approach.
As part of demand planning, which is a technique for matching customer demand to available supply, what-if scenarios are used to think about what would happen if something didn’t work out. This is done by combining data from several business divisions (most notably sales, marketing, and operations) in order to make better supply chain planning decisions.
Accurate demand planning in shop floor management benefits both short- and long-term planning because it helps visualize and pinpoint production disturbances while also providing cost-effective strategies to finish procedures. This means putting together data from the past about order volumes and inventory turnovers with sales estimates that are always changing.
Keep track of delivery dates
Using shop floor management software, you can immediately detect your estimated ship dates for manufacturing orders. When taking new orders, this is a tremendous help since it gives you a date you can mention to a customer and a promise you can keep. Paying employees overtime to meet deadlines or breaking client commitments with late shipments can have a negative impact on future business.
Real-time production data tracking can help you release WIP orders by letting you know when they’ll be finished. When there are production bottlenecks, which can’t be avoided, your production schedule may need to be changed, and some operations can be moved to available resources. This is also called “constraint management,” and it refers to tasks that have to be put off because of a lack of resources or materials.
ERP Systems Can Help You Integrate Your Operations
Shop floor management solutions are an excellent complement to your current manufacturing ERP software. A few shop floor control solutions provide integration wizards, which can help with data collection for other systems like CRM software. An SFM software company may also specialize in connecting their software to a certain ERP or MES. The most important benefit of integrating all of your company management systems is that you can see all of your activities at once.
Businesses will want to avoid having to enter the same information over and over again when they get new sales orders, hire new people, or buy new equipment. Businesses would want a system that could move data from the planning and scheduling phase to their ERP solution without any problems. Plex Cloud ERP allows you to manage your tasks.
1. EnterpriseIQ
EnterpriseIQ by IQMS is a single source for all of the tools you need to run your business. All of these tools are stored in a single database. Only EnterpriseIQ’s comprehensive suite of modules completely connects production and accounting, removing the need for
2. MasterControl Manufacturing Excellence
Manufacturing MX (MasterControl Manufacturing Excellence) is a digital production records software that moves a manufacturer’s production records and procedures to a completely digital environment. This software is called Manufacturing MX. The MasterControl Manufacturing Excellence package can assist you with this.
3. Katana MRP
Smart and visible manufacturing software (Shopify, WooCommerce) is needed by manufacturers who use Xero or QuickBooks and sell on eCommerce. It makes production management and inventory monitoring easier than ever before.
4. Aptean Industrial Manufacturing ERP Workwise Edition
You can run Aptean Industrial Manufacturing ERP Workwise Edition on your computer or in the cloud. It’s a smart ERP that works both ways. Manufacturers who need total insight into their shop floor and delivery operations are the primary users of the system.
5. Rootstock Cloud ERP
Rootstock Cloud ERP is a Salesforce Cloud Platform-based manufacturing, distribution, and supply chain software. Sales order management, inventory control, purchase order tracking, and standard costing are all part of the same software that you use.
6. frePPLe
FrePPLe is an open-source supply chain planning software that allows for cloud-based inventory and production planning. Free Pepple allows you to better plan and schedules your supply chain process. Forecasts will be provided by Frepple.
7. Plex Cloud ERP
Plex Cloud ERP is a cloud-based manufacturing ERP software that lets you cut expenses while growing with your company. People who work in manufacturing can use Plexus Online to help them deal with a shaky economy, higher steel prices, and competition from all over the world.
8. Radley Traceability
Radley Traceability is a food production industry-specific on-premise bi-directional track and trace system. The software allows you to gather, store, and track information on your ingredients and other raw materials used in the food production process.
9. Protected Flow Manufacturing
Shop floor planning and execution are made easier by Synergy’s Protected Flow Manufacturing. It stops work from being released too early, reduces task wait times, protects client commitment dates, and gives operations first priority in the planning.
10. Shop Floor IQ
Shop Floor IQ is a shop floor management software that gives you real-time data on your workforce productivity. For small and medium-sized businesses (OHE), this product will help them be more effective. The tools are provided by Shop Floor IQ.
11. Shopfloor-Online
The Shopfloor-Online Manufacturing Execution System (MES) for Smart Manufacturing is a modular system that can be used for all of your production tasks. Whether you work in production, quality, inventory, or maintenance, Lighthouse Systems Shopfloor-Online can help you make your business more digital and keep it running smoothly.
12. Macola
For more than 40 years, Macola has given software solutions to thousands of small and medium-sized businesses and distributors. Our products assist businesses in increasing revenue, lowering expenses, reducing risk, improving operational efficiency, and improving customer satisfaction.
13. Factory Edge
Factory Edge is a manufacturing resource planning (MRP) software that keeps track of all of your company’s critical operations. Inventory planning, accounting, material resource planning, and operation tracking are all part of the same solution for the company.
14. SMARTer Manager
SMARTer Manager can help you keep track of your inventory, make accurate forecasts, and keep supply and demand in line. If you use this system, you will have a lot of flexibility and versatility. The Smarter Manager’s Job Costing application.
15. Exenta Shopfloor
Expenta Shopfloor is the next generation of shop floor control software. It includes WIP visibility, document delivery, quality control, face check (biometric auditing), API connectors, and real-time BOM updates (material usage), among other things.