KPIs, Bottlenecks and Operational Insights¶
Turn schedule and execution data into action: bottlenecks, root causes, KPI movement.
What it does¶
- KPI dashboards covering delivery, throughput, WIP, and adherence.
- Bottleneck identification by work center and product family.
- Delay attribution: materials versus labor versus machine versus priority changes.
- Trend reporting and operational cadence.
What's broken today¶
Most factories have plenty of data. What is missing is the link between the data and the decision. Dashboards report symptoms (OTD slipped, WIP grew, expedites jumped) without naming the underlying cause. Engineers spend hours on weekly reviews stitching together root cause from spreadsheets.
KPIs, Bottlenecks and Insights is built on the schedule and execution data Nexus already collects, so the link from cause to outcome is structural, not assembled by hand.
Inputs¶
- Schedule history from Trusted Scheduling
- Execution events from Shop-Floor Execution
- Downtime reasons captured at source
- Work order outcomes (completed, late, expedited, cancelled)
Outputs¶
- KPI tiles with drill-downs to the underlying events
- Bottleneck reports per work center and product family
- Exception summaries for the operational cadence
- Trend reports across day, week, and quarter
KPIs impacted¶
- Lead time
- On-time delivery (OTD)
- Throughput
- Work in process (WIP)
- Expedite reduction
How bottleneck identification works¶
A bottleneck is not just the busiest work center. It is the work center that, when slowed, slows the rest. Nexus identifies bottlenecks by:
- Modeling the actual cycle time of each work center, weighted by demand.
- Identifying the binding constraint at the current operating point.
- Quantifying how much of the lost throughput is attributable to that constraint.
- Showing whether the bottleneck is moving, shifting from one work center to another over time.
The report distinguishes between persistent bottlenecks (which need engineering investment) and transient bottlenecks (which need workflow attention).
Delay attribution¶
Every late work order is decomposed into the time it lost and where. The categories Nexus tracks:
| Cause | What it means |
|---|---|
| Materials | Required input was not ready when scheduled |
| Labor | Required skill or shift was not available |
| Machine | Equipment was down, in changeover, or otherwise unavailable |
| Priority changes | Order was deferred for a higher-priority job |
| Quality holds | Work was stopped pending quality review |
A late order is attributed to the largest contributor, not to a single cause, so weekly reviews can address the real driver.
Operational cadence¶
Insights is built to support a regular review cadence: a daily standup (yesterday's exceptions, today's risks), a weekly review (bottlenecks, attribution, trends), and a monthly leadership view (KPI movement, structural issues). All three pull from the same underlying data.
Integration points¶
Insights reads from Trusted Scheduling, Shop-Floor Execution, and Master Data Management. It can publish KPI feeds to external BI tools where the customer has a corporate dashboarding standard.