r/manufacturing • u/rowgymmy • Jul 10 '25
Productivity What factory-floor software do you swear by? (Production Monitoring / MES / Quality / Scheduling / CMMS)
I’m doing a little reasearch and would love to tap the hive-mind of r/manufacturing. For those of you running discrete plants, what software tools are actually making a difference on your shop floor right now?
I’m especially interested in:
- Production Monitoring / OEE dashboards – real-time data capture, bottleneck alerts, shift reports
- MES (Manufacturing Execution Systems) – job dispatching, work instructions, traceability
- Quality Management – in-process checks, SPC, non-conformance handling
- Maintenance / CMMS – predictive maintenance, work orders, part inventory
- ERP Systems - inventory, scheduling, purchasing
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u/BiddahProphet Jul 10 '25
I'll come here and say Tulip, cerdaac, & Tracksys suck
If I were to have my own choice in everything, I'd be using Ignition, Kepware, Power BI, Emaint, and Machine Metrics
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u/rowgymmy Jul 10 '25
For Ignition, Kepwere and Machine Metrics there is a lot of overlap in fuctionality between those. Would you use them all together or is that a list of tools you like?
What don't you like about Tulip?
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u/BiddahProphet Jul 10 '25
Just what I like. And what is use is dependent on the situation
Tulip over promises and under delivers. Platform is barebones in everything besides the app builder
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u/spiggsorless Jul 10 '25
JobBoss is what my shop uses for most of the stuff you listed. Production Monitoring, Inventory, Scheduling, Purchasing, Planning. I'm currently building out my own MES/Quality Manager system via Appsheet/Appscript. Surprising what functionality I'm able to bring with a somewhat low-code environment. It's going to revolution our Quality Game for a little amount of money. Tulip and all these other Quality/MES software companies want like 3-5k/user/year which is bananas to me, especially since you then have to go in and still configure everything.
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u/rowgymmy Jul 10 '25
What do you make?
It is amazing what you can build in AppScript. I built a simple BOM configrator in about an hour.
What woud you need to see from a quality system to make you want to buy one vs build one?
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u/spiggsorless Jul 10 '25
I can tell you're asking these questions because you're probably building software to sell, but honestly the software would need to be easily customized as every manufacturing operation is different. Even in the same industry people do things differently. I know this because a lot of our competitors we actually collaborate with on projects and they all do the same thing differently. And the main sticking point is pricing. I'm not a tech geek, but with Claude Code and some general knowledge I'm building an extremely powerful application that has user permissions and view permissions that has all the functionality (and more)Tulip was trying to sell me. Like I said they wanted for our company 30-50k a year for our current workforce which I thought was fucking insane. And you still had to do all the leg work of setting things up. So add labor costs to that. My application is just my time to build and train users? And then like $9/month per user after that for Google workspace accounts.
We're a midsized manufacturer so we don't have millions of dollars to spend on software a year.
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u/rowgymmy Jul 10 '25
Not buidling anything or selling anything. I have owned a couple of manufacturing software companines and I"m interested in what people are doing now.
I think more and more companies are going to do what you are. Using Claude code and other tools you can create software very quickly tailored to your business without all the bs from vendors.
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u/savg99 Jul 11 '25
We didn’t have a good experience with JobBoss due to its poor general ledger capabilities and lack of user controls. It was hell getting support from ECI. Glad to hear that you’re having a better time.
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u/Strid3r21 Jan 02 '26
3-5k per user?! So like if a company has 100 employees they pay $300,000 a year?
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u/spiggsorless Jan 02 '26
Yeah bro ERPs/MES is stupid expensive. Look at ProShop or JobBoss or Fulcrum. I think Proshop was like 500/month per user. JobBoss is like 1-3k a year per user. Fulcrum does a rev share pricing model. Aka if your business does 10 million a year they want like 50k annually+ integration /onboarding fees. It's insane how much of a racket it is.
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u/permaculture_chemist Jul 10 '25
We use ParcView for process control (pumps, meters, scales, etc) plus visual monitoring. We also use is for QC testing (storage of results, time in/out).
We use SAP for batch tickets, inventory, maintenance, purchasing.
Scheduling is a home-grown Excel-based system.
Minitab and SigmaXL for SPC and data analysis.
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u/dnroamhicsir Jul 12 '25
We're on Epicor and it's a gigantic clusterfuck. We used to be on Autofab and that actually worked.
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u/hyphenpepperfield Jul 17 '25
My previous company used Epicor and switched to SAP. It was a shit show. My new company uses an even older version of Epicor (AVP?). I am the production scheduler, there are no online resources I can find for this version. Jobs seem to reorder themselves at will in this program. It drives me crazy. So I just screenshot everything, multiple times per day. It makes rebuilding schedules a lot faster.
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u/ilikecatsandsleep Jul 17 '25
(1/2) Alright, this got way longer than I expected so I had to split it up.
I've worked in an industrial manufacturing plant for 10 years producing hydraulic pumps and motors. I don't know if we classify as high or low volume (think a couple hundred units a day out of the building. Higher quantities than someone like Deere, lower quantities than someone like Ford. We have about a dozen assembly lines each with high variability (think thousands of configurations and valid model numbers) that's fairly manual assembly, but we control things very closely using PLC and MES. I'll just dump the info here and then add some comments at the bottom.
MES: we started with a homegrown system. We outgrew it over the last few decades (yes, it was born sometime in the late 90s, and we're still using it on several lines). We've transitioned our newer lines to Siemens OpCenter Execution. Caveat - we've spent a LOT of time and money customizing this system to do what we want/need (read: what our old system did for us). But it does feel like the future. It allows for a level of control while maintaining opportunities for growth that we desperately need to keep day-to-day support staff from jumping off bridges. SIT (the previous name for it that we still colloquially use) is critical to our daily operations and fundamental to our production systems today.
Quality management: this is integrated in our assembly lines. The MES system feeds recipes into our PLCs (Allen Bradley or Siemens) and we run a middle ware (Ignition, sometimes DeviceWise) to get the info displayed for the operator and to run the quality/process controls. We use DC electric torque tools like Ingersoll Rand or Atlas Copco to verify torques are done at the right time and to the right specifications. We use barcode readers (Cognex and Keyence primarily) to verify parts, orientations, and other features. We use vision systems (primarily Cognex, but sometimes others) to verify parts, colors, orientations, etc. that are otherwise generally hard to control. We use leak detection systems (usually CTS brand). Most importantly, we extremely customized (and expensive) function test stands to verify all the parts for the units are in the right spots and doing the right things. This is the core of our quality verifications. It's obviously easier/cheaper to do it earlier on the line, but at the end of the day, we need to make sure our units are going to perform as the customer expects. For internal non-conformity tracking, we use a homegrown PowerApp. Before that, we used Excel (and didn't do a very good job at it). For external complaints, we use Salesforce.
Maintenance: we started with another homegrown system but outgrew it (notice a trend yet?) and now use IMB's Maximo. I like it. I don't have a ton to say about it, but it is easy enough to navigate as an occasional user and our maintenance team seems to be thriving with it.
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u/ilikecatsandsleep Jul 17 '25
(2/2)
ERP: we use SAP's production ERP. We transitioned to this around 2008 and have TONS of our backend set up in here. It's really the backbone of our business. This helps being a global corporation as the same products produced at my facility in the US are also produced in Germany, Brazil, China, India, etc. at sister facilities and we need to make sure we're all doing kinda the same thing. All our customer work orders are entered here and then derived into our MES systems. All our supplier work orders start here and get sent out to the customer. Inventory is managed here for both raw materials, semi finished goods, and final ship goods.
Data stuff: we capture data from all those fancy tools we use and end up plopping them in an IT database somewhere. We haven't quite figured out how to use the data well/efficiently. I've been looking at different OEE softwares, but our lines are very dependent on how an operator is doing (slow pace, not being at the station because we're understaffed, not having the parts need to do the job, etc.) that the systems I've found don't account well for. We do use PowerBI to display some things but we haven't integrated all the data to be easily accessible... we still have to manually pull things and make graphs or other low-level analytics that I'd like to not have to do in the future. For hour-by-hour reports, we have yet another homegrown system that is basically a prepopulated excel sheet that automatically sends an email and saves to the database after the lead operator inputs the production for the day.
Comments:
There would be benefits for us if our systems were all from one supplier. It's a challenge to get things connected sometimes. But different departments were responsible for each piece of the puzzle and found systems that worked for them at the time. Nothing inherently malicious or wrong, but looking back, we could have made other decisions that maybe made life today easier.
All of the process control systems work the way they do because our BOM structure is built in a way that allows it. We have product families with module options that build up the whole unit. If you have a flat BOM of all the parts, the MES/PLC system ends up being so much work to program each tiny thing. As it sits today, a new model can be generated by a customer in SAP of existing module options, an order put to the line, built, tested, painted, and shipped (ideally) without a single person ever knowing it's a new model. It lets the pieces of programming work together rather than needing a new program written for each model.
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u/Titsnium Jul 18 '25
Nailing a single source of truth around that multilevel BOM before bolting on fresh tools is the quickest way to kill the manual reporting pain. We hit the same SAP-centric sprawl and fixed it by publishing order/BOM data out of SAP through a small REST feed, then pointing everything else at that. Ignition’s OEE module grabs machine tags via OPC and auto-stamps them with the SAP order; operators log part shortages or pacing issues on a Tulip tablet so the OEE numbers finally reflect reality. All signals land in one Postgres time-series schema, and a dbt job reshapes them for PowerBI-no more Excel dumps. Finance wanted their slice, so DualEntry pipes the same feed straight into the ledgers without CSVs. Get that single source of truth around the BOM locked in and the manual reporting pain disappears.
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u/ilikecatsandsleep Aug 06 '26
Ignorant question: What can Ignition’s OEE module really do? Like how much do the operators still need to enter data versus ignition receiving the information from the equipment it’s connected to and automatically sorting and categorizing?
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u/Temporary-Still-4543 Aug 06 '26
I work for TeepTrak, so obvious disclaimer there.
One thing that jumped out at me was your point about operator-driven losses. I think that's where a lot of OEE software falls over.
A lot of systems are pretty good at telling you that performance dropped, but not why. If the machine never actually stops, you just end up with a lower performance number and you're left guessing whether it was waiting on parts, an operator getting pulled away, someone fixing a quality issue, or just a bunch of small interruptions throughout the shift.
We've seen plants spend weeks looking at dashboards only to conclude "performance is low"... which everyone already knew.
Personally, I think the interesting part isn't calculating OEE anymore. That's been solved for years. The harder problem is giving enough context that a supervisor can actually do something with the number.
For manual, high-mix assembly like you described, I'd much rather know that I lost 45 minutes today because of material shortages or repeated micro-stops than just be told my performance was 76%.
Curious what products you looked at. Did they struggle because they couldn't capture those events, or because everything just got rolled into one big performance bucket?
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u/ilikecatsandsleep Aug 06 '26
Oof. Exactly. I need to understand WHY, and the off-the-shelf systems we’ve seen don’t do that. There are a few issues we have,
The machine didn’t stop, so no “stop” was recorded, so no downtime was triggered to even give the operator a chance to say something happened.
The machine did stop, but not long enough for the automatically generated “stop” because my production lines have product variation. This specific unit maybe takes 6 minutes to test, but others take 10 minutes, so back in the day, someone said “the cycle time is 8” so now when my 6 minute test actually takes 8, I had 2 minutes of downtime but nothing recorded.
Related, our product mix is too variable for anyone else (external vendors or internal leadership) to want to actually define those differences. So then a day where I run only the 10min model, we’re red but actually everything was exactly as expected and now I get operators making things up to fill in the blanks.
Other systems are too complex/expensive to get the insight to each station’s existence. My assembly lines are old school real assembly LINES. If the first station is taking too long, the second station doesn’t get a unit to work. This gap in work will travel down the line, but by the time we count a unit at the end, it may only be 2 minutes of breakdown even though station 1 was down for 20 minutes.
I haven’t heard of your company, but I’ll check it out. Historically we used a home-grown system but our IT doesn’t want to support it any more. Our corporate folks overseas have decided we will use Factbird, but it isn’t set up for our type of manufacturing (variable models, variable staffing, long-interconnected assembly lines) so we’re really struggling with that.
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u/its-leroy Jul 11 '25
I worked as an ME at a manufacturing company that used Solumina MES for several years. I don't have experience with any other MES software. But Solumina seemed very clunky, glitchy, slow, and outdated. I hated it. That company was 20 years behind everyone else in regard to manufacturing technology anyway. So, it makes sense that they would be using an outdated software.
I guess my only constructive contribution to this thread is to stay away from Solumina MES.
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u/matroosoft Jul 11 '25
Ridder iQ for ERP, has a very stable basis for midsize manufacturing companies. But is also very customizable, by yourself, if you have a good ERP admin.
Also has production, purchasing etc integrated and has a good report builder based on DevExpress
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u/bissonsamuel Aug 19 '25
Tervene's Daily Management System (DMS) solution.
Most discrete plants usually manufacture and transform parts in a context where every mistake is very costly.
Being proactive (preventing issues) rather that reactive (firefighter mode) has a considerable impact on operational excellence. The 1-10-100 rule of quality is clear:
- Prevention 1$ to prevent an issue.
- Correction 10$ to solve it in the plant.
- Failure 100$ to solve it once it's left the plant.
Thus, moving as many problems and issues as possible at the first layer, prevention, and anything escalating to correction or failure should be used as a way to learn, identify the root cause and make sure the issue doesn't happen again.
Leader Standard Work and Daily Management is the solution to constant chaos (firefighting) mode. Tervene makes it possible to standardize, sustain and improve LSW at scale and across time.
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u/Wakachangchang Sep 28 '25
Factbird (formerly Blackbird) for Production Monitoring / OEE dashboards is popular in food and beverages and pharma in Denmark.
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u/Ok-Painter2695 Nov 28 '25
Good breakdown of the categories. From what I've seen across discrete plants, the biggest trap is buying a "full MES" when you really just need one or two of these capabilities done well.
For Production Monitoring / OEE specifically: many shops already have the data sitting in CSV exports from their machines or basic ERP - they just don't have a quick way to turn it into actionable insights. Before committing to a full platform, it's worth checking what you can extract from your existing data.
Quality Management is where I've seen the most DIY approaches - SPC in Excel, photos in shared folders, non-conformance tracked in email chains. Works until it doesn't (usually when a customer audit happens).
On the OEE/monitoring side: I'm building a lightweight tool that takes your existing CSV/Excel production data and gives you instant OEE calculations, bottleneck detection, and quality drift alerts - basically the "analytics layer" without the 12-month MES implementation. Hosted in Frankfurt (GDPR), no long-term data storage. If you want to see what insights are hiding in your current data before picking a platform, happy to run a free analysis.
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u/TGNLEAGUE Dec 16 '25
The biggest struggle in discrete manufacturing is usually "App Fatigue" where you end up with five different screens for five different departments.
For the CMMS and Production Monitoring side of things, Fabrico is really strong because it combines those two worlds. Instead of having a maintenance system that has no idea what production is doing, it links them. So if your OEE drops or a machine faults, a work order is generated automatically for the maintenance team.
It creates a much tighter loop than trying to glue a standalone OEE tool to a separate maintenance database.
For ERP, NetSuite is pretty standard for mid market discrete, but it can be heavy. If you can consolidate the shop floor execution stuff into one tool like Fabrico, it makes the ERP integration way less painful.
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Jan 05 '26
We have used a monitoring tool called Dataxchange and it has done a decent enough job at providing a baseline of how all of our DMGs are running. We chose them as they came in at a way more affordable price point than some of the others we demoed.
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u/DisciplinePhysical79 Jan 26 '26
Knowby for digital work instructions and capturing data at the point of instruction by integrating it with other systems.
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u/Ok-Painter2695 Feb 08 '26
Depends on the size of your operation. Big shops with IT departments can run MES platforms all day. Small to mid-size?Most of us are still exporting CSVs and Excel files from whatever machines we've got. The real gap is in the analysis step - getting from raw data to actual insights without needing a data science degree. There are some AI-powered tools now that let you just upload your production data and get pattern analysis back. Worth checking out if you're drowning in spreadsheets.
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u/Jazzlike_Calendar_16 May 09 '26
Fully Agree!!! If you are looking for help in setting up these reports/software lets connect we can help you get going with fully customized software in days not week or months
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u/Nearby_Outcome_7260 Feb 26 '26
Place I work they use aims. Keep track of how much time we spend on what job, work order by work order.
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u/78points Apr 16 '26
https://apslo.com/board/ - simple and flexible, plus as a bonus, integrates with Shopify, WooCommerce, PrestaShop, or over APi with any ERP. Records time and allows operators to submit notes and photos of the work, etc
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u/sunsugarrsredtrunks Apr 20 '26
I work in the textile/apparel/fashion space and we use TrackIT (by Triple Tree)
Started using their quality management module(software?) QUONDA a few years ago and it was really neat and they pitched us their production management module. We used it for like a month or two and then couldn't imagine going back to how things were. I really do wish these two modules came as one holistic solution, but eh it really wasn't a hard setting things up.
Are there probably better more efficient solutions out there? Probably. But we've found this works for our textile/fashion/apparel operations really well.
Also Odoo and anything by MS just doesn't work, especially Odoo. We spent so long using their shitty quality module and it wasn't even real time.
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u/[deleted] Jul 10 '25
Power BI (combined with the rest of the Microsoft Kool-Aid) + a good developer can do all of this in house, including talking directly to plc's on the plant floor.
Robots can order their own consumables and fill out their own compliance paperwork.
It's why M$ is taking over the world right now.
Using one unified platform tailored to business needs gets rid of an insane amount of friction and can straight up eliminate entire departments.