Manufacturing Visibility: Real-Time Shopfloor Transparency with Dashboards

What Is Manufacturing Visibility?

Manufacturing Visibility describes a transparent, end-to-end view of all relevant production states and performance metrics in real time.

Instead of isolated machine displays and Excel reports, Manufacturing Visibility provides clear answers to questions such as:

Which machines are running, stopped, or in setup right now?
What is the current OEE, FPY, and scrap rate per line, shift, or product?
Which orders are on track and which are at risk of missing delivery dates?
Where are today’s biggest losses on the shopfloor?

At its core, Manufacturing Visibility consolidates machine data, order data, and quality data, aggregates them, and makes them accessible via dashboards and KPIs.

Why Manufacturing Visibility Is Critical Today

Without Manufacturing Visibility, many plants operate with limited situational awareness.

Decisions are based on intuition instead of real-time data.
Problems are discovered only after quality, cost, or delivery issues escalate.
Shift leaders spend time hunting for data instead of improving processes.

With a well-implemented Manufacturing Visibility approach, manufacturers gain real-time transparency into production status, performance, and quality. Disruptions, deviations, and bottlenecks are detected earlier, and daily shopfloor management is based on shared, objective KPIs instead of fragmented reports.

Core Building Blocks of Manufacturing Visibility

Manufacturing Visibility is not a single tool. It is a combination of multiple components working together.

Data Sources

Machine and process data from PLCs, OPC UA, robots, and test benches are combined with order data from ERP or MES systems, quality data from measurement systems and end-of-line tests, and optionally maintenance information.

Context and Data Model

Each data point is linked to order, product variant, material, machine, shift, and operator. Only with this contextualization do KPIs become meaningful and actionable.

Dashboards and KPIs

Role-based dashboards are provided for operators, shift leaders, production, quality, and management. Typical KPIs include OEE with availability, performance, and quality, First Pass Yield and scrap rate, throughput and lead time, WIP levels, downtime reasons, setup times, and bottlenecks.

Alerts and Workflows

Defined thresholds trigger notifications, escalations, blocking actions, or additional inspections. This turns visibility into active production control instead of passive reporting.

The Role of Cloud MES in Manufacturing Visibility

A Cloud MES is the logical backbone for Manufacturing Visibility.

It collects data from machines, inspection systems, and manual inputs.
It knows orders, BOMs, variants, and shifts.
It automatically calculates KPIs such as OEE, FPY, and downtime structures.
It provides dashboards and reports via browser across multiple sites.

Compared to isolated solutions, Cloud MES avoids media breaks caused by Excel or local data loggers, ensures consistent KPI definitions across plants, and reduces IT overhead through cloud-based updates, backups, and scalability.

Manufacturing Visibility with SYMESTIC

With a Cloud MES like SYMESTIC, Manufacturing Visibility becomes operational rather than theoretical.

Real-time shopfloor dashboards show live machine and line status, OEE, output, speed, and downtime for operators and shift leaders.
KPI cockpits for management and operational excellence teams provide aggregated views by plant, line, product, customer, or time period, with a clear focus on loss drivers such as top downtime reasons, scrap hotspots, and setup time shares.
Drill-down capabilities allow users to move from a high-level KPI, such as plant-level OEE, down to a specific downtime event on a single machine in a specific shift, all based on one consistent data foundation.
Cross-site transparency makes it possible to compare similar lines and plants within one system and understand why performance differs.

Manufacturing Visibility therefore becomes an operational decision foundation directly connected to order control, quality management, and continuous improvement processes.

Typical Use Cases for Manufacturing Visibility

In shift handovers and daily shopfloor meetings, discussions are based on shared dashboards instead of individual Excel files, making decisions faster and more objective.

In OEE improvement programs, losses become visible, quantifiable, and prioritizable. Improvement measures can be directly linked to measurable results.

For on-time delivery performance, bottlenecks and backlogs are detected early, allowing planners to see which lines are truly at capacity risk.

In quality management, First Pass Yield, rework, complaints, and scrap are visible in real time and directly linked to process and downtime data.

Manufacturing Visibility is a prerequisite for any serious discussion about OEE, Lean Manufacturing, Operational Excellence, or digital factories. It is also the lever through which a Cloud MES like SYMESTIC demonstrates its business value directly on the shopfloor.