Turning shop floor data into daily operational decisions means capturing labor, job and machine data as work happens and getting it to the person who owns each call, on that call’s clock. Supervisors need it by shift start, planners within minutes of a disruption and plant managers by the end of the day.
The hard part of shop floor data is timing. A labor count that reaches the office the next morning can’t change today’s crew assignments, and a downtime note on a clipboard can’t trigger a reschedule. Syspro’s approach to turning shop floor data into daily operational decisions starts with the decision and works back to the data: who makes the call, and how soon the data has to arrive to change the outcome.
Why shop floor data arrives too late to change the day
In a plant that tracks work on paper timesheets and clipboard downtime logs, data reaches the ERP after the shift that produced it. The ERP still holds the plan. Until someone keys in the paperwork, it has no record of the hours each job consumed or how long each machine sat idle.
That lag has a cost. By the time the gap between plan and actual shows up, the shift that could have closed it is over.
Syspro Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM) replaces manual collection with real-time shop floor data collection. Its integration with Syspro updates job progress, labor bookings and material consumption as work moves through production, so the plan and the actuals sit in one system.
Shift start: what supervisors decide with shop floor data
At the start of a shift, a supervisor decides who goes where and which late jobs get extra hands. Those calls depend on the prior shift’s output and today’s attendance, and both have to be on screen before the first machine starts.
Syspro TimeTrack gives supervisors dashboards for work in progress, job status and employee performance. Supervisors can compare productivity across shifts and work centers without walking the floor. Workers clock in, switch jobs and record production from phones, tablets or touchscreen kiosks, so the numbers on the dashboard come straight from the people doing the work.
In plants running Syspro MOM, visual dashboards show color-coded status updates with real-time visibility of employees, equipment and job progress. Job cards track labor, materials and progress at a glance.
Mid-shift: what planners decide when the plan breaks
Mid-shift decisions start with a disruption: a machine stops, material runs short or an operator goes home sick. The planner has to decide what moves, and that decision depends on how fast the news arrives.
Syspro MOM collects machine data automatically through sensors, programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and human-machine interfaces (HMIs), and it connects equipment over OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA). A stopped machine registers without anyone walking to a terminal to log it. MOM also sends instant alerts for critical events to the app or by email, so the team can act quickly.
For the reschedule itself, MOM’s finite capacity scheduling accounts for people, machines, tooling and materials, so the revised plan reflects what the plant can run. Planners prioritize jobs with drag-and-drop and adjust the schedule for urgent orders or rework.
End of day: what plant managers decide about losses and cost
By the end of the day, the plant manager is choosing which loss to work on tomorrow and which jobs are eating margin. That takes performance data broken down by cause, plus cost data tied to individual jobs.
Syspro MOM tracks overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), total effective equipment performance (TEEP) and overall labor effectiveness (OLE), with a breakdown of the Six Big Losses. Its dashboards point to problems in loading, availability, performance or quality, so improvement effort goes where the losses are.
On the cost side, Syspro TimeTrack sends labor hours, production quantities and scrap back to Syspro, which combines them with material costs and pay rates to calculate actual job costs. That shows which jobs are eroding margin, so the team can quote more accurately and adjust pricing on future work. In plants running Syspro MOM, labor costs, material consumption and manufacturing overhead post to the financial side automatically for job costing.
How to start turning shop floor data into daily operational decisions
A phased start keeps the risk small and gives each step time to prove itself before the next one.
Labor and job capture comes first. Syspro TimeTrack is cloud-based, with no server hardware or complex installation, and it runs on the tablets, smartphones and kiosks a plant already has. Once the people side of the data is reliable, machine connectivity and finite scheduling through Syspro MOM come next. MOM’s loss analytics then help the plant choose its improvement targets.
AF Gason, an Australian farm machinery manufacturer, attributes the major payback on its Syspro investment to MOM and its use of shop floor recording and job recording. Job recording accuracy improved by more than 20%, and shop floor efficiency improved by close to 50%.
Data captured this way also sets up what’s next for Syspro manufacturers: Syspro Torque, Syspro’s industrial AI platform.
Shop floor data and daily decisions: common questions
What does turning shop floor data into daily operational decisions involve?
Each decision gets an owner and a deadline, and the plant captures the data that feeds it in time to meet that deadline. Labor, job and machine data recorded as work happens replaces paperwork that reaches the system after the fact.
What shop floor data does a supervisor need at the start of a shift?
The prior shift’s output by job, today’s clock-ins by work center and the status of any job running behind. Syspro TimeTrack supervisor dashboards cover work in progress, job status and productivity by shift and work center, and Syspro MOM adds equipment status to the same view.
What is the difference between OEE, TEEP and OLE?
OEE measures how much of planned production time is fully productive, combining equipment availability, performance and quality. TEEP applies the same measure to all calendar time, so it also shows capacity that was never scheduled. OLE applies availability, performance and quality to the workforce. Syspro MOM tracks all three.
Can a manufacturer start without connecting machines?
Yes. Syspro TimeTrack captures labor hours, production quantities and scrap from tablets, smartphones and kiosks, with no server hardware. Machine connectivity through Syspro MOM can follow.
See how Syspro MOM and Syspro TimeTrack fit your plant. Request a demo.
Key takeaways
- Shop floor data shapes daily decisions only when it arrives before each role’s window closes: supervisors by shift start, planners within minutes of a disruption and plant managers by end of day.
- Syspro TimeTrack replaces paper timesheets with cloud-based labor and job capture on tablets, smartphones and kiosks, with no server hardware.
- Syspro MOM collects machine data automatically from sensors, PLCs and HMIs, sends instant alerts for critical events and supports rescheduling with finite capacity scheduling.
- Plant managers use MOM’s OEE, TEEP and OLE tracking and Six Big Losses breakdown to choose improvement targets, and TimeTrack labor, quantity and scrap data to see actual job costs.
- A phased start, with labor capture first and machine connectivity second, lets each step prove itself. AF Gason credits MOM and shop floor recording with job recording accuracy up more than 20% and shop floor efficiency up close to 50%.
