What is a Production KPI Dashboard?
A Production dashboard is a data-driven visualization of a manufacturing process. Graphs, charts, and tables display the Metrics, Measures, and KPIs used to monitor performance. The dashboards provide real-time tracking and historical analysis leading to efficiencies in manufacturing processes and cost reductions.
The complex data used to populate dashboard charts and graphs comes from machinery, sensors, devices, and user inputs. Managers and operators then use these dashboards to make insightful decisions.
Overview
Production dashboards offer a centralized and flexible management and performance improvement tool. This flexibility provides manufacturing companies with the agility needed in an industry with ever-tightening operational margins.
Taking a holistic approach that includes the entire production environment, not just relying on the performance of machinery, but one that provides for Management, infrastructure, costs, and materials, is the key to sustained growth.
Transforming the data for all these components into an easily digestible form can only be achieved with dashboards.
When creating dashboards for production environments, several key factors need to be kept in mind. Firstly and most important is to have a clear plan outlining what the dashboard is trying to achieve. This plan would typically include everyone reliant on the content, for example, operators through to senior managers - each contributing only the essential information they need.
Who benefits from this dashboard?
Production dashboards simplify large data sets. Typically these come from various sources and deliver that information through understandable visuals to the right people to make informed decisions.
In a production environment, there may be several dashboards covering various roles and responsibilities:
Operators may be focused on throughput, change over time and the rate of defects.
Managers and supervisors use KPIs on the dashboard, such as production rates, demand forecasting, and avoided cost.
Maintenance Staff would monitor KPIs such as Mean time between failure (MTBF), Planned Maintenance Percentage (PMP), and uptime rates.
Senior Management, planners including the finance department would rely on KPIs such as Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), Work in Progress and Capacity Utilization.