Before the big system decision
See what your floor really reports before you choose a plant system.
A full MES or historian program is a large commitment. Doing nothing keeps the numbers in spreadsheets and in people's heads. There is a smaller first step. We connect the PLCs, HMIs and Kepware you already run to one live, read-only dashboard, so the bigger decision starts from real numbers.
The sample dashboard runs on representative sample data, not a customer's.
Three paths, side by side
The third column is where we start.
| Keep doing it by hand | A full MES program | Our first stepOne live dashboard first | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you see | Yesterday's numbers, pieced together from clipboards, exports and a shared spreadsheet. | The full production record: work orders, quality, genealogy and live status across the plant. | Machine status, part counts, run rates, uptime, downtime with reasons and OEE, live on one screen. |
| What it touches on the floor | Nothing new. Someone walks the floor, writes it down and types it in. | Operator stations, work order flow, and links to your ERP and controls. How the floor works changes, by design. | It reads from the PLCs, HMIs and Kepware already on your floor and sends nothing back to them. Operators keep working the way they do now. |
| Who owns it | Whoever built the spreadsheet, and whoever still understands it. | Your plant runs the program. The software is usually licensed from a vendor and set up by an integrator. | You do. Everything we build runs in your environment and belongs to you, source code and data included. Support is there if you want it, with no licence to renew. |
| What it asks of your team | Manual effort every shift with no end date, and a gap when the one person who knows it is out. | A dedicated project team, training across every shift, and a budget and timeline sized for a plant-wide change. | Time with your controls and IT people to map tags, and supervisors who check the screen against the floor. |
A fair word on MES: with the budget and the timeline for it, a full program is the right answer. A first dashboard doesn't argue with that. It gives you real numbers to plan it with.
Why start small
Decide from what the machines report, not from a guess.
A plant system is a big decision, and it is hard to make well without numbers you trust. Most plants don't have those numbers yet. They have a shift report typed up by hand, a spreadsheet one person understands, and a strong feeling about which line is the problem.
One live dashboard changes what you bring to that decision. You see which machines stop, for how long, and why. You see run rates against the standard, shift by shift. The talk about MES or a historian moves from opinions to what the floor actually does.
Sometimes that dashboard is enough for now. Sometimes it shows exactly where a larger program should start. Both are useful answers, and you get either one without rewiring the plant or retraining every shift.
If a full program is what you need, we will tell you plainly.
What the first dashboard covers
One live screen for the area of the floor you pick first, built with the supervisors who will read it every day.
- Machine statusRunning, idle or down, for each work center, as it happens.
- Part countsGood and total parts by line and by shift.
- Run ratesHow fast each machine runs against its standard.
- UptimeTime running, per machine and per shift.
- Downtime with reasonsEvery stop, how long it lasted, and why.
- ScrapRejects by machine, if the controls or quality records hold them.
- OEEAvailability, performance and quality, worked out the way your plant defines them.
- TrendsThe same numbers over days and weeks, so patterns show.
Where the numbers come from
PLCs, including Allen-Bradley, HMI screens, Kepware and other OPC servers, and the spreadsheets people keep beside them.
How it connects
Read-only. We read tags and logs and never write to the controls, so your controls team can check exactly what the connection does.
A plain word on OEE
The machines can report status and counts. They rarely know the shift calendar or the ideal cycle time for each part. Those tend to live in ERP or in your engineering standards, and we pull them in with your team.
Nothing thrown away
If you go bigger later
Under the first dashboard, your plant's data is organized into a proper layer that other software can reach through APIs. That work carries forward into whatever you decide next.
The tag map
Which tag means what, on which machine, checked with your controls people. Any larger system needs the same map, and yours will already exist.
The data layer and its APIs
Production data, structured and put in context with shifts, parts and stop reasons. Other systems read it through APIs, including a bigger one if you add it.
Your plant's definitions
What counts as downtime, which stop reasons you use, how OEE is worked out. Agreed once with your team, and reused by whatever comes next.
The source code, the plant data and whatever we set up to run them are yours, inside your own environment. Keeping us on for support is your choice, and there is no licence to keep up. A larger program can build on what is there or replace it, and nothing ties that choice to us.
Capabilities
The dashboard is often the first project. This is the rest of what we build for plants and shops.
- Shop-floor dashboardsLive plant views drawn from PLCs, HMIs, Kepware or other OPC servers, plus whatever spreadsheets fill the gaps.
- Spreadsheet workflows rebuilt as web appsGoverned from day one: every change logged, access set by permission, and the rules signed off by you before any rebuilding starts.
- Workflow automationThe copying, chasing and re-keying between people and systems, handled by the system instead.
- System integrationsYour ERP, the floor and the tools in between, passing data without manual exports.
- Plant data, structured, behind APIsOne well-defined place for production data that other tools can read.
- Reporting that assembles itselfShift and weekly reports built from the data, not by hand.
- Custom internal toolsSmall, focused software shaped around how your supervisors and planners work.
- Ongoing supportThere when you want it. Optional, never a licence.
Who does the work: one team covering PLC and controls work, Allen-Bradley included, plus data integration and architecture, back-end and front-end developers, and ERP advice. Behind it sit more than two decades spent building systems inside businesses where operations carry the weight.
Weighing a big system against leaving things as they are?
Talk it through with the people who would do the work. Tell us about the plant, the lines and what you are deciding between.
The sample runs on representative sample data.