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Shop-Floor Execution and Visibility (iMES)

Close the loop between plan and reality with operator updates and real-time status.

What it does

  • Operator task screens designed for station-based workflows.
  • Start, pause, and complete actions with reason codes.
  • Issue capture for blocking constraints, quality holds, and missing material.
  • Real-time status propagation back to planning.
  • Alerts for late or blocked work.

What's broken today

MES, ERP, and operator logs rarely talk to each other, which means decisions lag behind real conditions. Operators are asked to record what happened in one system, planners replan from a different system, and the two views drift apart within hours of every shift start.

Inputs

  • Published schedule from Trusted Scheduling
  • Task instructions per operation
  • Workstation or resource assignments

Outputs

  • Live task status as it happens
  • Delay reasons captured at source
  • Execution timeline (every state change tracked)
  • Exception alerts to supervisors and planners

KPIs impacted

  • Schedule adherence
  • WIP aging
  • Downtime impact
  • Labor utilization
  • Rework drivers

Operator experience

The iMES operator screen is designed for the people doing the work, not for the people watching them. Each station shows:

  • The current task, the next task, and any pending exceptions.
  • Start, pause, and complete actions accessible in one tap.
  • Reason codes for delays, structured by the categories the plant cares about.
  • Clear escalation paths when material, tooling, or quality holds appear.

When an operator captures a state change, the change propagates to the schedule, to KPIs, to alerts, and to the supervisor view within seconds.

The closed loop

The execution loop is the difference between a manufacturing system that learns and one that decays:

  1. The schedule is published.
  2. Operators execute and capture state.
  3. Real-time status flows back to planning.
  4. Trusted Scheduling re-evaluates if needed.
  5. KPIs and Insights updates dashboards.
  6. The next plan is informed by what actually happened.

Integration points

Shop-Floor Execution consumes the schedule from Trusted Scheduling, uses operation and routing definitions from Master Data Management, and feeds KPIs and Insights with execution-level events.