Every project in machinery manufacturing includes aspects of precision, planning, and performance. From the initial design of a machine’s components to the final assembly onboard, the production cycle is exceptionally connected.
A single delay or material inconsistency can affect the entire timeline. And most disturbingly, the ultimate effect on customer delivery.
To help eliminate this problem, manufacturers are beginning to move from manual tracking to a digital Production Management System (PMS) — a web-based, integrated software platform that meets our goal of connecting people, machines, and processes with ease.
What is a Production Management System?
A Production Management System is a software platform that assists manufacturers with planning, scheduling, executing, and monitoring a production schedule in real time. It bridges the gap between planning and production on the shop floor, ensuring that every resource (material, workforce, and machine) is coordinated towards the common goal of delivery. In machinery manufacturing, where every order is custom-built and multi-stage, a Production Management System like ManufApp provides an enhanced structure for control and traceability.
Why It’s Necessary for Machinery Manufacturers
Unlike repetitive mass manufacturing, machinery manufacturing is different for every order you take. Each order is unique with:
- Unique Bill of Materials (BOM)
- Custom routes and operations
- Subcontracting and in-house stages
- Complicated inspection and testing items
Handling these with Excel or paper is a slow process because the data won’t always be included in the production revisions. When implementing a Production Management System, those processes become faster and more interlinked, providing a single source of truth for your entire factory.
Explore how in our blog on Effective Sales Forecasting for Manufacturing Companies
1. Intelligent Production Planning and Scheduling
Production starts with planning, and when production is not digitally managed, that is where delays often originate. The Production Planning module in ManufApp will electronically “check” for you:
- To verify material availability against the BOMs
- To assign operations to machines and workcenters
- Automatically calculate load and cycle time for each operation
- Upon resource unavailability, you can suggest alternate routes (part routing)
You can ensure smooth flows and balanced load utilization across machines.
Explore More: Capacity Planning in Manufacturing: A Complete Guide
2. Live Floor Tracking
When active production begins, visibility is essential.
ManufApp enables operators on the shop floor to capture output, rejects, and downtime using mobile or tablet devices.
You can see at a glance:
• Completion status by operation
• Batch status by progress
• Utilization rates and idle time by machine
• Shift-based reporting metrics
Real-time dashboards highlight deviations, enabling managers to respond quickly and avoid detracting from efficiencies.
3. Flexibility on BOM and Routing
Machine items are built from hundreds of components.
ManufApp’s BOM and Routing Management provides an easy way to define and update that structure if needed.
Key highlights:
• Multi-level BOMs with version control
• Dynamic routing to allow alternative operations
• Auto-calculation of consumption based on UOM
• Change log for design revision tracking
Having flexibility in BOM and routing ensures that every order follows the correct process while being tracked.
4. Quality and Inspection Management
Quality assurance is crucial to machine manufacturing.
The Quality module in ManufApp integrates with the production stages to provide consistency in inspections.
You can:
Set inspection criteria for each process
Take readings, upload pictures, or add comments
Automatically create NCRs or rejection tags
Identify trends utilizing quality reports
This ensures you have zero defects and maintain ISO or IATF compliance.
5. Integration with Inventory & Procurement
Your production is heavily reliant on materials being on hand.
By connecting the production plan with the Inventory and Procurement modules from ManufApp, you can ensure that the material arrives when needed.
The system will automatically:
- Reservation of material to stock for confirmed jobs
- Submit purchase indents for shortages in stock
- Trace inward material via LOT or batch
- Notify users when there are delays, or when materials are nearing expiry, etc…
This connection helps ensure your shop floor can maintain productivity with minimal stoppages.
6. Coordination of Machine and Maintenance
Many machinery plants in manufacturing can incur substantial costs when machinery is not available to produce items. ManufApp links your maintenance system to your production system. If a machine is due for maintenance, the production plan is adjusted, and any jobs impacted by the machine’s downtime will be automatically rescheduled.
Preventive maintenance, when linked with schedules, helps ensure adherence to the preventive maintenance schedule, thereby increasing machine uptime and reliability.
Learn more about Preventive Maintenance in Manufacturing
7. Easier to Subcontract
Machinery components often require processes to be completed with subcontracted vendors. For example, processes such as machining, heat treating, and surface coating are often completed by external vendors. ManufApp simplifies the subcontracting process flow based on the previous scenarios outlined by:
- Automatically producing subcontract orders
- Tracking the material leaving and coming back to the organization
- Tracking the subcontract lot and components back by vendor process completion
- Capturing inspection data when they arrive back at the organization.
This method provides accountability and visibility into the outsourced process flow.
8. Analyses and Reports for Continual Improvement
Data is power.
ManufApp offers customizable dashboards and KPIs, including:
• OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness)
• Cycle time analysis
• WIP age report
• Rejection trends
• Operator performance
These analyses help managers identify bottlenecks, improve planning, and make data-driven decisions.
Check out our list of Top 10 KPIs in Production Management
9. Traceability and Compliance
Machinery manufacturing involves detail-oriented traceability from raw material to final product.
ManufApp maintains real-time digital records for every batch, process, and part.
This helps audits and regulatory compliance by providing traceable records of:
• Vendor LOTs
• Material certifications
• Process approvals
• Test results
Read our detailed post on Subcontracting in Manufacturing.
Benefits of using ManufApp for Machinery Manufacturing
• Visibility in real time at all stages of production
• Improve resource utilization and planning accuracy
• Streamline quality inspections and workflow processes
• Lower downtime through connected maintenance
• Improve the speed of decision-making based on data
• Full traceability and audit-ready
Conclusion
Modern machinery manufacturing requires more than spreadsheets and manual follow-ups. A Production Management System like ManufApp integrates your entire manufacturing ecosystem, encompassing planning, materials purchasing, execution, and quality checking.
With real-time visibility, automatic workflows, and entire traceability, ManufApp gives manufacturers confidence that they can deliver the precision machines their customers ordered on time and on budget.
