A production system written around your plant's process

The problem people usually come to me with

The plant has a sales and inventory system that handles invoices and stock levels well, but stops exactly where production begins. Between taking an order and shipping the finished product there is a gap, filled with spreadsheets, notes on the shop floor and the memory of a few people.

The symptoms are always similar:

• the stock level is right in the software but does not match what is on the shelf,
• nobody can tell where an order stands without walking onto the shop floor and asking,
• the recipe exists in three versions: in the software, in a binder and in the process engineer's head,
• the monthly production report takes two days and always ends in an argument about something,
• waste and shortages are known only roughly, because nobody records them as they happen.

What I build

Planning and work orders

A queue of work orders with priorities, assignment to machines and lines, and a weekly view for the planner. Each order knows what it is made from, how much is left and who is working on it. A change to the plan in the office shows up on the shop floor immediately, without printing a new sheet.

Recipes and semi-finished products

Recipes with variants, semi-finished products and conversion to the real fill volume rather than the container name. Raw material consumption is calculated from what was actually used, including waste. Changing a recipe does not rewrite history, because batches produced earlier remember what they were made from.

Operator panels on the shop floor

A touchscreen at the machine instead of paper and a pen. The operator reports start, downtime and finish, logs a defect, scans the batch code and prints a label. I design the panels for work in gloves and in a hurry: large buttons, one task per screen, and a description at every field saying plainly what goes into it.

Inventory that matches the shop floor

Receipts, issues, transfers and stocktaking linked to production instead of running alongside it. Raw material is deducted at the moment it is used, not at month-end close, so the stock level is true in the middle of the week, not only on the last day of the month.

Labour and performance accounting

How much a shift produced, how much a line produced, where the bottleneck is, what went to waste and why. The data collects itself as operators do their normal work, so the report is not a separate chore for someone in the office.

Quality control and defects

The reason for a defect is picked from a list rather than typed by hand, because only then can you later count what keeps recurring. A photo serves as evidence when the case involves a complaint or goods supplied by a customer.

What implementation looks like

• On-site assessment. A day or two on the shop floor and in the office. I look at how the work really happens, not at how it is described. This is the stage that most often changes the assumptions.
• First module in production. One area, the most painful one, launched within a few weeks. It collects real data from day one, so you can see straight away whether it reflects the process.
• Running in parallel. The old process keeps working until the data in the system matches the paper. Nobody puts production at risk for the sake of an implementation.
• Extending. Further areas are added to the running system, in an order agreed with the company rather than fixed in the contract up front.
• Support. Fixes, changes forced by new products or regulations, new machines. A system without development becomes the bottleneck again within a year.

What already runs

The largest of my systems has been running a manufacturing plant day to day since May 2026: 58 modules, over a thousand screens and data exchange endpoints, touch panels on the shop floor, label printing, barcode scanning, excise records and data exchange with the parent system. It was built from scratch and developed while the plant kept working normally. Details and screenshots are on the FabOS website (in Polish).

Frequently asked questions