The implementation of the Business Intelligence dashboard in the manufacturing industry has shown an upward trend.
As more and more manufacturing information is generated, a problem with the most important information that is needed by the organization arises, because most of the time the valuable information is hidden and unseen.
Manufacturing dashboard software should be easy to use, applicable to your industry, and should indicate what is happening with your business at any moment. With the right dashboard software, you can make sense of all the information your company generates regularly, which can help you to enhance your processes and balance production.
Dashboards can transform any data into accessible and understandable information.
A manufacturing dashboard helps to track the most relevant key performance indicators at a specific access point. It allows manufacturers to monitor and improve the quality of production and is a highly valued analytics tool for effectively managing all related production costs.
There are a lot of sources from where the manufacturers collect data. For instance: MES systems, MRP systems, ERP solutions, and many others. But this data, while providing many valuable insights for the company, is often in a format that is extremely difficult to understand and extract ideas from. This makes manufacturers wonder how they can drive change with their software and machinery solutions.
A manufacturing dashboard can track key performance indicators like:
- Materials handling
- Quality and downtime
- Safety protocols
- Productivity results
- Process flow
The benefits of using custom dashboards in the manufacturing industry
Dashboards simplify complex information
Through the use of clear and easy to understand diagrams and maps, efficient manufacturing dashboards will turn the production data into practical data visualizations. Such visualizations can offer operators and managers a direct insight into their progress in production, which can be used to provide a fast glimpse of overall results.
Dashboards can be showcased on computer monitors throughout the production facility, providing a clear picture of their manufacturing performance. The best news is that with the help of graphics and colors, you can customize the dashboard. It can be extremely simple – as green means you’re running well and red means you’re in a downtime.
Right information, right person, right time
The dashboards are obviously versatile. They can take most data sources and reshape that data into information that can be used to comprehend operational performance better. This gives manufacturers the chance to develop highly customized dashboards that deliver the proper information to the correct person at the right time.
For instance, you can build a custom dashboard that shows all the data from a line performance monitoring solution. Then it displays it to the production manager who is in charge of tracking the line performance.
The dashboard can also be used to display the data from another tool, such as ERP or MRP, on a visual level. This way you can have a clear overview of the cost versus production, being able to improve the overall production performance.
Connect data sources
Manufacturing relies on an increasing number of factors. This includes preparation, budgeting, organizational efficiency, logistics, and many more. Each of these factors has to operate as part of a well-oiled machine to keep the company profitable.
Dashboards can effectively combine the data from many sources into a single database. This allows you not only to evaluate the efficiency of a single factor but to compare factors and measure how their connections impact each other.
This enables market analysis, gives you the ability to track the flow-on impact between different manufacturing departments, and greatly reduces the time spent collecting and consolidating various data sources.
Conclusion
Dashboards are important for every business, but even more so for manufacturers. They are an important tool for any decision-maker and help drive and guide the business in the right direction.
Dashboard software will reveal hidden patterns and remove inefficiencies by integrating the data sources and showing them visually through easily understandable graphics. Manufacturing dashboards are simple to create, customize, and share with the stakeholders at any level, from the plant floor to the board room.
An easy-to-use manufacturing dashboard software allows for greater efficiencies within the business. Of course, you will need a professional team of developers to build the dashboard to meet your organization’s specific needs.
Dashboard software allows better information sharing across the business, making it easier to detect underperformance of inefficiency in processes. With this improved visibility and information, improvement opportunities can be found more easily, encouraging progress.