How do I become a Smart Factory? From the shop floor to the weekly review
It starts on the shop floor, with an Operator Panel that operators want to use because it makes their work easier. Then comes a rhythm of daily standups and weekly reviews that shows where time and money are lost, and what to do about it.
Updated: 11 October 2026
Start on the shop floor
The Operator Panel is the part of Smart Factory that operators use every day. It is not a monitoring tool for management but a tool that makes their work easier: no clocking in, no walking to the office for a drawing, no paper job cards. Everything is at the machine.
See what is coming
With an ERP connection, the operator sees which jobs are scheduled for this machine, in what sequence and with how many parts. There is no need to ask the planner, and the operator can prepare: lay out tools, find the fixture, review the drawing. When the current Production Order is done, the next one can start without delay.
When the operator starts a job, Smart Factory knows which Production Order is running on the machine. The batch is created automatically, counting begins and the actual time is recorded next to the planned time. Without an ERP, the operator links the running NC program to a part by hand. Smart Factory works with and without an ERP.
Drawings, NC programs and notes at the machine
- Documents. Drawings, setup sheets, quality instructions and tool lists for the job. Operators can also save a photo themselves, for example of a tricky clamping, for whoever makes this part next time.
- Comparing NC programs. When an NC program has changed, the operator sees the new version line by line next to the previous one before starting it. A changed feed or a new tool path stands out before the spindle turns.
- Notes. “Tool 7 vibrates after 40 parts, replaced at part 42.” Notes like this stay with the batch. Knowledge that otherwise lives only in people's heads is recorded and easy to find.
No manual time logging
Start times, end times, cycle times and part counts come automatically from the connection to the machine. The operator does not clock in or out or write down times. Their job is to make good parts; the administration happens by itself. That is why the Operator Panel is popular on the shop floor: it does not add work, it removes it.
The daily standup: five minutes every morning
The production manager opens the Wallboard or the app. No paper, no Excel, no asking around. Three things to look at:
- Yesterday's OEE per machine. Purple and blue are strong, green is solid, orange needs attention, red needs action. A machine that was blue all week and suddenly turns orange is worth a conversation.
- Machines that stood still too long. The timeline shows gray gaps in the morning before the first cycle, or long gray stretches between two jobs. Those are the hours you can win back.
- Cycle times that crept up. In a batch, compare the cycle times with the ideal time. If the average went up, something changed: a worn tool, a different feed, a different way of working.
Good questions for the standup are, for example: “Machine 3 stood still from 14:00 to 15:30 yesterday. What happened?” or “The cycle time went from 4:20 to 5:10 halfway through the batch. Was the feed turned down?” These are not blame questions but curiosity questions. The goal is to understand what happened so it does not happen again tomorrow. The data takes the emotion out of the conversation.
The weekly review: thirty minutes
Once a week the production manager, the shop floor manager and, if useful, the planner sit together with Smart Factory on a laptop or TV. This is where you find the patterns a single day does not show.
- The OEE trend of the week. Which machine had the worst week, and why? One bad day is an incident, three bad days in a row are a pattern.
- NC programs where money was won and lost. Put the actual time next to the paid time. Take the three biggest losers and ask: was it a one-off, or is the estimate structurally wrong?
- One of the two big losses. Alternate each week between slow workpiece changes and slow setups, so you keep improving both.
OEE: what the number tells you
OEE combines availability, performance and quality into one percentage.[1] An OEE of 65% does not tell you what to improve. The three parts do.
| Low part | Where to look |
|---|---|
| Availability | The machine spent too little of the planned time machining: setups, workpiece changes, waiting time, unplanned stops. |
| Performance | The machine machined slower than it can: the active time per part against the ideal time, reduced feeds, microstops. |
| Quality | Too much scrap: rejects, rework, scrap during setup. |
Smart Factory colors OEE in five bands: below 40% poor (red), 40 to 60% fair (orange), 60 to 75% good (green), 75 to 85% excellent (blue) and 85% or more world class (purple). How to calculate OEE is explained in How to calculate OEE in machining. How to use it day to day is covered in How to use OEE for better production.
Slow workpiece changes
Workpiece change time is the orange time between two parts in the same batch: the workpiece is swapped, not the tool. Together with the green active time it makes up the cycle time of a part. It is necessary, but it adds up quickly in series work. In the cycle list, each green bar has an orange bar next to it. If the orange bar is almost as long as the green one, you spend almost as much time changing as machining. Large differences within one batch mean some changes went well and others did not.
A question for the weekly review: “On the series of 50 housings the change took 45 seconds on average, but three times it took more than 2 minutes. What happened then?” And: “Can the change program run faster?”
Slow setups
Setup time is the magenta time before the first part. In small batches it is a large share of machine time, and a small improvement there pays off a lot. Compare the setup time for the same NC program across batches. If one operator sets up in 20 minutes and another needs 45 for the same work, there is a method worth writing down and sharing.
The SMED principle helps: separate the setup work that needs the machine stopped from what you can prepare while it is still running.[2] Smart Factory does not do that for you, but it shows how much time is at stake.
Where money is won and lost
Every NC program has a paid time: the time the customer pays for. Smart Factory puts it next to the actual time from the machine. The difference is your margin, or your loss. If the paid time is 6:00 minutes per part and the actual time 7:30, you lose a minute and a half per part. On a batch of 200 parts that is 5 hours of machine time nobody pays for.
It also works the other way: “We estimated 8 minutes per part, it ran in 6.” Then you decide on purpose whether to quote sharper or keep the margin. More in Post-calculation in machining.
Bring your team along
Transparency, not surveillance
Smart Factory shows what happens on the shop floor, including what operators do: who set up fastest, how long a machine stood still between shifts. Be open about that from day one. Use the data to find the best approach and share it: “Peter sets this up in 20 minutes. What can we learn from that?” Then operators see it as a tool. Point fingers and you lose the shop floor. That is a leadership choice, not a technology choice.
A Smart Factory champion
Appoint one person who learns the system well and becomes the go-to person. Not necessarily the boss; often it is a curious operator or process planner. This person runs the standup, prepares the weekly review and is the bridge between the shop floor and the numbers.
Month by month
Month 1: just look
Change nothing yet. Let the data come in, start the daily standup and put up the Wallboard. After two weeks you have a baseline: this is where we are. Most people are surprised, and that surprise is the start.
Month 2: quick wins
Start the weekly review. Tackle the biggest loser from the batch list and the top reason for downtime. Compare setup times between operators and share the best approach. Adjustments like these often bring the first improvement without any investment.
Month 3 and later: structural improvement
Now you see patterns across weeks and months. Alternate in the weekly review between workpiece change loss and setup loss. Update the estimates in your ERP with measured times. Back investments with data: a quick-change clamping system, a tool presetter, a second fixture for setting up in parallel.
The math
An example with assumptions: 10 machines, each about 330 planned hours per month in two shifts, and a machine-hour rate of €150. If OEE rises by 5 percentage points, each machine delivers about 16.5 more good hours per month. Together that is about 165 hours, roughly €25,000 of productive capacity per month. You already own that capacity; you just were not using it. It only turns into money if you can fill those hours.
Frequently asked questions
Where do I start if I want to become a Smart Factory?
On the shop floor: connect the machines, put the Operator Panel at the machine and hold a five-minute daily standup. Change nothing in the first month and use that time as your baseline.
How much time do the standup and the weekly review take?
About five minutes a day and thirty minutes a week. The standup is about yesterday, the weekly review about patterns.
Does Smart Factory work without an ERP system?
Yes. Without an ERP, the operator links the running NC program to a part. With the ERP integration, the scheduled jobs and times come in automatically.
How do I keep operators from feeling watched?
Be open from the start about what is visible, and use the data to learn from each other, not to find someone to blame. Start with what makes their work easier, such as drawings at the machine.
About Smart Factory
Smart Factory reads active time, setup time, workpiece change time, downtime and part counts straight from the CNC control and shows them in the app, on the Wallboard and at the machine on the Operator Panel. More: Smart Factory and Pricing.
Sources
- ISO 22400-2:2014, Key performance indicators (KPIs) for manufacturing operations management, Part 2
- Shigeo Shingo: A Revolution in Manufacturing. The SMED System. Productivity Press, 1985
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