Guided journey
6- Setup Production and the Factory
Describe your factory to WindoorERP — the stations, the machines, the people and the quality gates — then push one real order through it.
Journey complete
You have worked through every step. Keep the momentum — the next journey builds on what you just did.
All journeysManufacturing is the one part of WindoorERP that cannot be configured generically, because it is a description of your building: which station comes after which, what machine sits there, who is allowed to operate it, and what has to be true before a frame moves on. Everything the shop floor later shows you is only as accurate as that description.
Build it in the order material travels, and finish by pushing one real sales order through the whole thing. A factory layout that looks right on a configuration screen and wrong on the floor is the most expensive kind of mistake here, and one order is enough to expose it.
By the end you will be able to
- Lay out your factory as work centres, in the order material actually travels
- Register the machines at each station, and the operator skill each one demands
- Give operators a way to sign in at a station without a keyboard
- Put a shop floor terminal at the station so progress is recorded where the work happens
- Print the labels the floor scans, and name the reasons time is lost
- Set the quality checks a frame must pass, and who signs off rework or scrap
- Schedule preventive maintenance before a breakdown schedules it for you
- Take one sales order all the way through: manufacturing order, cutting list, optimisation, shop floor, labels
Before you start
- Administrator rights and the Manufacturing app installed
- Your product catalogue and profile series loaded — "4- Setup Your Product Catalogue and Designs"
- A warehouse and its operation types configured — "2- Setup Your Warehouse"
- A walk of the actual shop floor with the production supervisor, in the order material moves: this journey is a description of your factory, and it cannot be written from a desk
The path
01
Lay out the factory
- 01 Describe the stations, in order A work centre is a place where something happens to a frame — cutting, milling, crimping, glazing. Create them in the order material actually travels, because every queue, backlog and bottleneck report later reads that order back to you. 1 min Configure work centers, CNC fabrication lines, and factory layouts
- 02 Register the machines and who may run them Double-head saws, corner crimpers, CNC routers — each belongs to a station and each demands a skill. Recording the skill is what stops an unqualified operator being scheduled onto a machine at two in the morning. 1 min Register double-head saws, corner crimpers, CNC routers, and required operator skills
02
Let the floor sign in
- 03 Give operators a badge, not a password Nobody types an email address wearing gloves. PIN badges and multi-user station logins are how a shared terminal still knows who did the work. 1 min Manage active operator workstation logins and multi-user PIN badges
- 04 Put a terminal where the work happens Progress recorded an hour later in an office is progress nobody trusts. A touchscreen at the station records a step the moment it is finished, by the person who finished it. 1 min Operate touchscreen Shop Floor Terminals for real-time station execution
03
Print and account for time
- 05 Design the labels and name the delays Two small settings with long shadows: the label template the floor scans, and the list of reasons a station was not producing. Without the second, downtime is a number you cannot act on. 1 min Configure barcode label templates and productivity loss reason categories
- 06 Get labels to the right printer Cutting labels and glazing labels are printed at different stations by different people. Print queues put each label where the person who needs it is standing. 1 min Manage automated profile cutting and glazing barcode label print queues
04
Set the quality gates
- 07 Decide what a frame must pass Dimensional tolerance, corner crimp strength, water-tightness. Define the checks now, at the stations that should catch a fault, so a defect is found in the factory rather than on a tower's fourth floor. 1 min Perform dimensional, corner crimping, and water-tightness quality inspections
- 08 Decide who may authorise rework and scrap Scrapping an assembled frame destroys material, labour and a delivery date at once. An approval matrix makes that a decision with a name attached, at the level the loss justifies. 1 min Enforce multi-level engineering and managerial approval matrices for rework and scrap
06
Run one order through the factory
- 10 Release a real order to the factory The configuration is done; now use it. Take a confirmed sales order and launch manufacturing from it, and watch the openings become manufacturing orders on the layout you just built. 2 min Launch production from a sales order
- 11 Get the cutting list out The cutting list is where a design becomes lengths of aluminium. If the profile series or the frame dimensions were set up wrongly, this is the screen that says so. 2 min Generate a cutting list
- 12 Optimise the cut and see the waste Nesting the cuts across full-length bars is where the margin on a job is won or lost. Run the optimisation and look at the offcut percentage — that number is your setup, marked. 2 min Optimize profile cutting
- 13 Watch it move on the floor Follow the work orders across cutting, milling, crimping and glazing on the terminals you set up. This is the first time the layout, the skills and the terminals are all tested together. 2 min Track work on the shop floor
- 14 Print the labels and close the loop Piece labels are what makes an assembled frame identifiable on a lorry, on a site and on a fourth floor. Print them, scan one, and the factory setup is finished. 2 min Print piece labels
Running a window or door factory?
Ask for a demo