Monitor the factory from the Overview dashboards

7 min read Updated 2026-08-30 WindoorERP 19.0

What this does

The Production › Overview menu holds the factory's two live views. Production Control is the analyst's screen: OEE, active orders, waste rate and produced-versus-target, with a downtime breakdown and the live state of each machine — refreshed when you press its refresh button or change the range. Dashboard is the self-updating wall view: a form that reloads itself every 30 seconds (and on every published floor update), carrying the graphical factory floor, its KPI panels, a scan box, and one-click drill-downs into everything currently moving — WIP, blocked work, subcontracting, dispatch, the print queue and finished-goods stock.

Everything both screens show is computed from the same records the rest of the app edits — work orders, labour logs, produced units, machines — so they are only as live as the floor's discipline in recording work.

Before you start

Any production-user role — both screens are open to the whole production team.
Machines registered with capacities, and labour logs actually being written: OEE, waste and downtime all read from labour logs, and machine states come from work orders starting and finishing (or the terminal).

Steps

Production Control with the OEE, active orders, waste rate and produced-versus-target cards, the output-versus-capacity chart, downtime causes doughnut and live work-center list

01
Open Production › Overview › Production Control. The header badge tells you what you are looking at (LIVE, OFFLINE, LOADING); refresh with its ⟳ button when you want fresh numbers.
02
Pick the activity range — presets from Today to All Time; the default is the last 30 days. The produced count, waste sparkline and output chart follow the range.
03
Read the four KPI cards: Overall Equipment Effectiveness, Active Production Orders (a snapshot of orders in planning/ready/under-production — not range-scoped), Material Waste Rate against its threshold, and Produced vs Target — produced units against the total ordered quantity across open and done orders (the range-scoped produced count is the small chip beside the date range).
04
Read the charts row: Production Output vs Scheduled Capacity per day, and the Downtime Causes doughnut — the top loss reasons by logged minutes.
05
Act from the bottom row: the Live Work Center Status list shows each machine's state and rate, and the quick actions jump to planning, non-conformances and maintenance.
06
For the drill-down view, open Overview › Dashboard: it reloads itself on its refresh interval; scan a unit barcode in Scan to Advance (a successful scan also publishes a floor update to the live bus), and use the header buttons to open the exact records behind each number.

How the numbers are computed

Figure	Where it comes from
OEE	The average over work orders that have an OEE figure. With none yet, a proxy is shown instead: running machines ÷ all machines.
Material Waste Rate	Scrap ÷ (good + scrap) from labour logs in the range. The threshold that turns the card red is a system parameter (default 5%).
Produced vs Target	Produced units against the total ordered quantity, summed across all non-cancelled production orders — an all-time completion gauge, not a range figure.
Downtime Causes	Labour-log minutes per loss reason, top six — every loss type, not only availability.
Work-center list	The first eight machines with their live state (Producing / Idle / Breakdown), per-machine OEE and rate.

The Dashboard snapshot

The Dashboard recomputes on every load — and it loads itself: an interval (30 seconds by default, an administrator can change the parameter) plus every published floor update trigger a reload, with Refresh Snapshot there for an immediate one. Beyond the floor map it carries KPI panels Production Control does not have — machines and Andon counts with telemetry attention, flow and quality (average OEE, open NCRs), dispatch control (packed and loaded packages, pre-dispatch QC pending, open deliveries), finished goods, the print-server queue, and energy meters. It adds:

The Live Factory Floor — machine tiles positioned as arranged in the Factory Planner, grouped into zones, with a small HUD (machines / running / telemetry / WIP / OEE) and a live-events strip listing down or blocked machines and stuck work orders (or "No blocking events in the current snapshot.").
Scan to Advance inline — scan a produced-unit barcode to step it one floor stage without leaving the screen.
Drill-down buttons across the header: Open Orders, Andon — Machines, Live WIP, Ready Work, Blocked, Subcontract, Dispatch, Print Queue, FG Stock, and the chart shortcuts (OEE Chart, Defect Pareto, WIP by Stage, Labour) into the Reporting analyses.
Publish Live Update — pushes the floor snapshot to the live display bus for wall screens; the badge beside it reports Sent or Unavailable.

The Production Dashboard snapshot with its drill-down header buttons, the scan-to-advance box and the graphical live factory floor

Note

A third Overview entry, Factory Planner, appears when the Work Orders feature is on — the visual floor-plan simulator whose saved scenarios are the Factory Layouts covered in the configuration article. The machine positions it saves are exactly what the Dashboard's floor map draws.

Troubleshooting

Production Control shows LIVE but the widgets are empty or zero	The connection is fine — the records are missing. Check that labour logs and produced units are actually being recorded; on a brand-new database most tiles legitimately read zero.
OEE looks implausibly high on a fresh site	With no work-order OEE recorded yet, the card falls back to the running-machines share — a utilisation proxy, not real OEE.
Active Production Orders ignores the date range	By design: it is a now-snapshot of open orders, whatever range the charts use.
Downtime doughnut is empty although the floor stood still	Downtime only exists where labour logs carry minutes with a loss reason — pauses without a reason, or unlogged stoppages, are invisible.
The Print Queue button does nothing	It opens the label print queue only when the label-print module is installed; without it the button is silently inert.
The waste card shows no sparkline	The trend line renders only once the range holds at least six days of waste data; until then the card shows the number and threshold alone.

Common mistakes

Reading the dashboards as measurement when the floor is not recording — unlogged work shows as idle machines and zero output.
Treating the capacity line as a plan. It is the raw sum of machine capacity ratings per day — a nominal reference; fixing the "gap" may just mean the capacities are optimistic.
Expecting the wall screen to alert someone. Neither screen sends notifications — Andon calls and NCR escalations do that; the dashboards only display.
Comparing this OEE with the Reporting pivot's summed OEE column — in the pivot the percentages add up unless read per row.
Leaving Production Control open all day as a monitor — it refreshes only on its button; the self-reloading Dashboard is the wall-screen view.

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