The Production Floor
The floor assigns work to idle machines by itself. You confirm what comes off them, and deal with what needs you.
The Production Floor is the board for a shop that is running more than a couple of jobs at once. It assigns work to idle machines by itself; your job is to confirm what comes off them and deal with anything that has stopped.
How work reaches a machine
When you press Start Production on an order, the work it needs becomes jobs. The floor places those jobs on machines that are free and capable of the work. You do not queue them by hand — though you can assign a specific job to a specific machine when you want to.
What a machine's status means
| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| Idle | Free, and able to take the next job. |
| Running | Working on a job right now. |
| Needs you | Finished, or stopped, and waiting on a person. This is the one to look at first. |
| Paused | You paused it. Runs already on the machine will finish; no new ones start. |
| Error | The machine or its agent reported a failure. |
| Maintenance | Held out of service by you. It takes no work until you mark it clear. |
| Offline | Not reachable. Usually the agent is not running or the machine is switched off. |
| Retired | Taken out of the fleet for good. |
“Needs you”
The board has a rail listing everything waiting on a person. If you only look at one thing when you walk in, look at this. A machine sitting in Needs you is a machine not earning.
Why an idle machine is taking nothing
An idle machine next to unplaced work looks like a bug and usually is not. The board tells you the reason in plain words on the job itself — the build area has not been confirmed empty, the machine is not capable of that work, the job is on hold, or there is simply nothing that fits. Read the sentence before assuming something has broken.
Confirming a run
When a machine finishes, it waits for you to say what came off it. Confirm the run good and the work moves on. Confirm it bad and the part goes back to be made again.
Record failures as they happen. A bad part confirmed on the day can usually still be re-run inside the promised date; the same failure noticed at packing cannot. Owner, Manager and Technician can complete an operation; a Viewer cannot.
Holds, pauses and maintenance
- Hold a machine when it needs attention. It stops taking new work; runs already on it finish.
- Pause a job when the work needs to stop but the machine does not.
- Release a hold and the floor starts placing runs again.
The fleet
Machine fleet is where machines are added, grouped into work centres, retired and deleted. Retiring takes a machine out of service while keeping its history; deleting is offered only after retiring, and cannot be undone.
Machines connected to an agent report their own status. See Connecting your machines.
In short
Check “Needs you” first, confirm runs honestly and promptly, clear a machine after taking a run back, and read the waiting reason before assuming the floor is stuck.