Book jobs on and off at the machine
A touchscreen or tablet at the cell, so start and finish times are recorded as they happen rather than written down and typed up later.
By job role
Capture it where the work happens, not at the end of the shift.
Shop floor data capture, SFDC, means recording what actually happened at the moment it happens rather than reconstructing it from memory and a paper traveller. Output IQ does it on tablets, touchscreens and barcode scanners, and it lands straight in the ERP.
- No implementation fee
- Rolling monthly
- Thirty days to change your mind
- UK hosted
Floor terminalsLive
Jobs booked today
Whole site
148
Prev day131↑ 13.0% Day average139↑ 6.5%
Time to book a job
Average
9
Paper traveller240s↓ 96.3% Target12s↓ 25.0%
Terminals live
Floor and stores
12
Added this month4↑ 200.0% Planned16↓ 25.0%
The problem
Paper gets to the office three days after the job did.
A traveller goes out with the work, gets written on in biro, comes back creased, and somebody types it in on Friday. Every step between the machine and the system adds a delay and a chance to get it wrong.
01
The record is written from memory
An operator finishing at four is asked what time a job started at eight. The number that reaches costing is an honest guess, and every guess rounds the same way.
02
Someone has to type it all in again
Hours, quantities, scrap and material movements get keyed a second time by a person who was not there. That is a salary spent on transcription and a second chance to introduce an error.
03
Nobody knows where a job is right now
A customer rings to ask. Somebody walks the floor to find out. In the meantime the schedule is being planned against a picture that is three days old.
What you get
Booked at the machine, in the system instantly.
Scan barcodes for stock and materials
Goods in, issues to a job, transfers and stock counts, all scanned rather than written. The stock figure stops being a monthly argument.
Record scrap and rework as it happens
Quantities and reasons captured at the point of the problem, so the cost lands on the job that caused it rather than disappearing into an overhead.
No re-keying, anywhere
What the floor records is what the office sees. There is no second entry, no batch upload and no spreadsheet in the middle.
Works on the hardware you have
Tablets, fixed touchscreens, phones and barcode scanners. Rugged where it needs to be, ordinary where it does not.
Where the numbers come from
Four sources, one figure.
None of this is typed in by anybody. The number you look at is assembled from the parts of the business that already produce it.
The ERP
Orders, stock, purchasing and finance. What was sold, what it was quoted at and what was bought to make it.
Mobile job tracking
Jobs booked on and off from a phone or a tablet on the floor. Labour lands against the job as it happens, not on a timesheet at the end of the week.
Connected sensors
Power, vibration, heat, pressure and run hours, straight off the machine. Nothing to key in and nothing to remember.
One record, written once
Captured at the point of work and posted straight through to jobs, stock and costing. Nothing typed twice and nothing waiting for Friday.
Time to book a job 9 Against roughly four minutes on paper
In practice
Measured, anonymised results will be published here as our first deployments report them. Nothing invented goes on this page in the meantime.
The rest of the business
The same feed, read a different way.
- Owners and directorsKnow what it costs to run.
- ProductionFull control of your shop floor in real time.
- OperatorsAll the upside, none of the extra work.
- EngineeringEfficiency from hard data, not guesswork.
- MaintenanceCatch it before it becomes a breakdown.
- QualityEvidence for every batch, not assumptions.
- FinanceReal costs now, not at month end.
- PlanningA plan built on real times.
- Health and safetyEquipment condition, watched continuously.
- FacilitiesThe utilities nobody meters.
Questions
The ones we get asked about SFDC.
What does SFDC actually mean?
Shop floor data capture, sometimes shop floor data collection. It covers any system that records production activity at the point it happens, using touchscreens, tablets, barcode scanners or readings taken from the machine itself.
Do operators need training?
Minutes rather than days. The terminal shows the jobs on that machine and asks for a start, a finish and a quantity. If it needs a manual it has been designed badly.
What hardware do we need?
Tablets, fixed touchscreens or scanners, depending on the environment. We will tell you what suits each area rather than selling you the same device for the workshop and the paint line.
Does it work without a connection?
Bookings queue on the device and post when the link returns, so a Wi-Fi blackspot delays the record rather than losing it.
How is this different from machine monitoring?
Machine monitoring reads the machine. SFDC records what people do, the job, the quantity, the reason, the material. Output IQ does both and joins them, which is where the value is.
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