Establishing Orbit
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C02 — Shop Floor Digitisation

Every function on the floor, running as one connected system.

Production, quality, maintenance, safety, utilities, traceability, stores, suppliers, workforce and leadership reviews — digitised into a single operating layer with one shared record underneath, sitting on top of the ERP and MES you already run.

The straight answer

What does shop floor digitisation actually include?

It covers ten operating functions: production and OEE, quality and compliance, maintenance and reliability, safety and EHS, utilities/energy/ESG, traceability and genealogy, warehouse and supply chain, procurement and supplier management, workforce and skills, and a control tower over all of them. Paper logbooks, Excel trackers and messaging-app follow-ups become configured digital workflows with owners, due times, escalation paths and an audit trail. It runs alongside your existing ERP, MES, QMS and SCADA rather than replacing them.

When this is relevant

You probably need this if…

  • Your shift handover is a WhatsApp message and a handwritten book.
  • Downtime reasons are reconstructed from memory at the morning meeting.
  • Quality checks live in binders and nobody can find last quarter's records during an audit.
  • Preventive maintenance is tracked in a spreadsheet that one person maintains.
  • You can't answer “which batches were affected” without days of manual searching.
  • Every department has its own version of the truth and they don't reconcile.
What we fix

Problems we address

  • Data captured twice — once on paper for the floor, once in Excel for the report.
  • Exceptions with no owner and no clock, so they age quietly until someone notices.
  • Compliance evidence assembled retrospectively in a panic before an audit.
  • Departments optimising locally because they can't see what they cost each other.
  • Reports that are accurate about yesterday and useless about right now.
  • Institutional knowledge that leaves the building when an experienced supervisor retires.
Our approach

How we work through it.

  1. Start where the pain is loudest, not where the demo is prettiest

    We sequence functions by what's actually costing you. For most plants that's production and maintenance; for regulated plants it's usually quality and traceability. It is almost never everything at once.

  2. Configure to your process, don't reshape your process to software

    Every plant has its own logic — its own approval chains, its own reason codes, its own definition of a good part. Workflows get configured to match how your plant works, not to a generic template.

  3. Design for the operator's hands, not the manager's dashboard

    If capture is slower than the whiteboard it replaces, adoption fails regardless of how good the reporting is. Interfaces are built for gloved hands, poor lighting and a shift running behind.

  4. Build the record first, the dashboard second

    A dashboard on top of incomplete data is worse than no dashboard, because people act on it. We establish reliable capture before we put a screen in the plant head's office.

  5. Keep the existing systems

    Your ERP stays. Your MES stays. We integrate to them so that plans, orders and actuals reconcile automatically instead of being re-keyed at the end of a shift.

Scope of work

What sits inside C02.

C02.01

Production & OEE

Live output, downtime and performance captured at source instead of reconstructed the next morning.

  • Production logbooks and plan vs actual
  • OEE, downtime and micro-stop analysis
  • Shift handover and daily review
  • Changeover and setup tracking
  • Batch and WIP tracking
C02.02

Quality & Compliance

Inspection, deviation and corrective action running as a closed loop with an audit trail.

  • Digital checksheets and in-process checks
  • Non-conformance and deviation workflows
  • CAPA, RCA and 8D
  • SPC and control charts
  • Calibration and gauge management
C02.03

Maintenance & Reliability

Preventive, breakdown and condition-based maintenance in one asset history.

  • PM scheduling and compliance
  • Breakdown reporting and work orders
  • Spares and consumption
  • Condition monitoring
  • MTBF / MTTR analytics
C02.04

Safety & EHS

Compliance evidenced continuously instead of assembled before an audit.

  • Work permits and LOTO
  • Incident and near-miss reporting
  • HIRA and hazard register
  • Safety audits and observations
  • Action tracking and closure
C02.05

Utilities, Energy & ESG

Your second-largest controllable cost, managed per shift rather than per bill.

  • Energy, water, air and steam monitoring
  • Boiler, chiller and ETP logbooks
  • Specific consumption per unit
  • Emissions and waste data capture
  • Framework-aligned ESG data packs
C02.06

Traceability & Genealogy

A searchable thread from raw material receipt to the pallet that left your gate.

  • Serial, lot and batch tracking
  • BOM and recipe validation
  • Stage-gate interlocks
  • Backward and forward trace
  • Electronic batch records
C02.07

Warehouse & Supply Chain

Real inventory positions tied back to the job that consumed the material.

  • GRN and incoming material
  • Bin, location and FIFO control
  • Issue, return and consumption
  • Cycle counting
  • Dispatch readiness and verification
C02.08

Suppliers & Workforce

Supplier performance and operator capability as running records, not annual exercises.

  • Supplier audits and scorecards
  • Incoming quality performance
  • Skill matrix and certification
  • Training records and renewals
  • Shift allocation and readiness
C02.09

Control Tower & Reviews

One live command view with exceptions that carry an owner and a clock.

  • Live KPI dashboards
  • Exception monitoring and alerts
  • Escalation matrix and SLA tracking
  • Multi-plant comparison
  • Automated shift and daily reports
Deliverables

What you get

  • Configured digital workflows across the functions in scope, matched to your process logic.
  • Mobile and web applications for operators, supervisors, functional heads and leadership.
  • A live control tower with role-specific views and drill-down to line and machine.
  • Escalation matrices with named owners, SLAs and closure tracking.
  • Automated shift, daily and management reports replacing manual compilation.
  • A complete, non-editable operating record for audit and investigation.
  • Integration into your existing ERP, MES, QMS and machine layer.
  • Documentation and handover material your team can maintain.
Outcomes

What changes

  • Downtime is logged as it happens, with a reason, an owner and a response time.
  • Quality escapes are caught at the station that caused them rather than at dispatch.
  • Audit preparation goes from weeks of compilation to a filtered export.
  • The morning meeting starts from a shared live view rather than a debate about whose number is right.
  • Exceptions stop ageing silently, because they carry a clock and a named owner.
  • Knowledge stays in the system when experienced people leave.
Engagement

How we partner on this.

ModelScopeTypical duration
Line PilotOne line or one cell, fully digitised end to end with a measured before and after. The internal proof case for a wider rollout.6–10 weeks
Function DeploymentOne or two functions — typically production and maintenance — deployed plant-wide.8–16 weeks
Connected Floor ProgrammeFull multi-function digitisation across the plant, with connectivity, integration, adoption and support.4–12 months
Multi-Site RolloutStandardised template deployed across the plant network with central governance.6–24 months
Questions

Frequently asked

No. OrbitX is platform-independent. Depending on what fits your operation, this is delivered either by implementing and configuring a proven manufacturing platform we hold a partnership with, or by building bespoke software, or by extending systems you already own. The assessment of which route to take happens in C01, before anyone is committed to anything.
No, and we'd advise against anyone who suggests it. ERP holds the plan and the transaction; MES holds execution against a work order. What most plants lack is the connective layer covering everything else — maintenance actions, safety permits, quality deviations, utility consumption, shift context. We build that and integrate it to what you have.
It doesn't. Older assets often can't be read digitally at all, in which case capture starts with operator entry at the point of work — which is still a large improvement over paper. Where retrofit sensing is worthwhile, we scope it separately under C03. Age of equipment changes the approach, not the feasibility.
By treating adoption as a design constraint rather than a training week. Operators are involved in interface design, capture is timed against the manual method it replaces, and supervisors' daily routines are redesigned around the system rather than alongside it. It's covered properly in C05, and it is the single most common reason these programmes fail.
Yes, and most clients should. Starting with production and maintenance covers the largest measurable losses in a typical plant and produces the business case for extending. Attempting all ten functions simultaneously is how programmes become eighteen-month projects that get cancelled at month eleven.
Yes. Offline capture with sync on reconnection is standard — plant floors are full of steel, and assuming reliable Wi-Fi in a press shop is not a plan.
Related capabilities
Start Here

Start with the audit, not the software.

A fixed-scope engagement. We walk your floor, map where data breaks down, and hand you a costed roadmap — whether or not you build any of it with us.