Understanding what’s happening on your production floor in real time is critical for staying ahead in today’s manufacturing environment. Production monitoring provides that visibility. More than just letting you know how many parts are coming off the line in a given length of time, production monitoring can gather, organize, and clearly present the data you need to assess performance, identify inefficiencies, and make evidence-based decisions to improve throughput, reduce waste, and raise product quality.

Production monitoring allows supervisors to see critical production data at a glance so they can act on it quickly. They may notice, for example, that a particular line is running below its expected rate or that frequent short stops are related to material changeovers or operator delays. Instead of discovering these issues at the end of the shift or in the next day’s report, they can respond immediately to keep production on track.

Tracking production in real time provides the data needed to answer questions like:

• Are we meeting our daily production targets?
• Have there been changes in output, downtime, or work-in-progress inventory?
• Is a particular machine underperforming or contributing to downtime?
• Is scrap or rework creeping in, and can we catch the problem earlier in the process?

Unlike process monitoring, which focuses on how products are made, production monitoring tracks how many are made in a specified period of time. It allows you to track not only total output but also machine status, operator performance, and overall equipment effectiveness (OEE). This is a powerful tool for achieving quick wins like boosting uptime and output.

PlantStar’s production monitoring helps you turn those questions into actionable insight.

PlantStar captures production activity in real time, so your team always has a live picture of what’s happening on the shop floor.

• Track production as it happens, either by rate or part count.
• Continuously track and record the complete history of machine uptime and downtime to spot bottlenecks or unexpected halts in production.
• View OEE in real time.
• Display all data in configurable reports and dashboards, so your team is continuously getting the information that matters most.
• Set events such as production slowdowns or unexpected downtime to trigger instant email, text, or text-to-voice alerts.
• Integrate with enterprise resource planning (ERP) as well as peripherals like scales, visual inspection systems, barcode scanners, and label printers for a complete, end-to-end view of production.
• Use optional RFID or fingerprint login for visibility into who is running each machine at any given time, and easily identify performance variations and training needs.
• Upload documents like product standards and job instructions, so operators always have the up-to-date information they need at their fingertips.