Most manufacturing execution systems are good at one end of the job or the other. Some are planning tools that know everything about the work order and nothing about what happened at the machine an hour ago. Others are data-collection terminals that capture every scan but leave the planner to rebuild the picture in a spreadsheet. This quarter we closed that gap in Synesis MES: the system now includes a full shop floor control layer — operator terminals, an Order Board, barcode travelers and scrap reporting — and two new planning views, a Production Calendar and a Gantt Production Schedule, that flag the orders needing attention before anyone has to ask.
One System Instead of Two
The shop floor work started as a separate application. A shop floor control package was designed by one of our SAP Business One consultants, who has spent years on production floors, and built out by our development team: paired terminals at each station, badge-and-PIN sign-in, station queues, the order flow from one work center to the next, travelers and scrap. When we reviewed it next to the MES, the conclusion was obvious. The MES already held the data underneath — work orders, operations, work centers, employees, production and scrap transactions — and the shop floor application added the part that faces the floor. Running both would mean two lists of work centers, two lists of people and two places where production is recorded.
So we merged the shop floor code into the MES. Today there is one product, with modules that can be turned on or off per customer. A job shop that only needs terminals and travelers starts there; a plant that wants scheduling, engineering data and analytics turns those on too, on the same database.
One record, two doors
Supervisors post from the office; operators post from the terminal. Both write the same production transactions against the same work order operations. The moment an operator reports a quantity, the Order Board, the work order, the scrap report and the dashboards all show it — there is nothing to reconcile at the end of the shift.
The Operator Terminal
Each station gets a paired tablet or PC running a full-screen kiosk designed for the floor: large buttons, no menus, nothing an operator in gloves can mis-tap. A terminal is paired once with a one-time code from the MES and can be pinned to a single station. Operators sign in by scanning their badge and entering a PIN; the session is tied to that terminal and signs out automatically after a few idle minutes. Repeated wrong PINs lock the operator until a supervisor unlocks them.
Once signed in, the operator sees the queue of released operations at the station — or scans the barcode on a traveler to open an order directly. From there the work is a handful of large buttons:
- Start and Stop. Starting an operation runs a labor clock for that operator; stopping it posts the hours, rounded up to the minute. A clock left running past twelve hours asks for the real hours on Stop, so a forgotten clock never charges a night.
- Report good quantity and scrap. Scrap always carries a reason, chosen from the list maintained in Shop Floor Setup.
- Issue material and add notes. What was used and what the next shift needs to know, recorded where it happened.
- Release the next step. When the station's release rule is manual, the operator releases the next operation to its work center.
Release Rules: How Work Moves Between Stations
Every work center decides when the next operation in a route becomes available. On Complete, the default, releases the next step when this one is finished. On In Process releases it as soon as this one starts, for steps that can overlap. Manual waits for someone to press Release on the terminal or the Order Board — useful where an inspection or a supervisor decision gates the flow. Releasing a work order releases its first operation, and released steps are never un-released, so the history of who released what and when stays intact.
The Order Board and Travelers
The Order Board is the supervisor's view of the floor. Every open work order appears with its stage — Needs Release, In Process, Queued or On the Floor — the station it is at, its route with the status of each step, quantity done against plan and the due date. Orders waiting on a manual release are counted at the top, so nothing sits idle because nobody noticed it was waiting.
Travelers are the paperwork that moves with the parts. Each one carries the part, quantity, due date and every operation with its station, under a Code 128 barcode of the order number that operators scan at the terminal. Scrap Reporting then shows every scrap posting by reason, order, operation, station, operator and terminal, so the conversation about scrap starts with facts: which reason, at which station, on which shift.
Production Calendar and Gantt Schedule
On the planning side, two new views show the same plan in two shapes. The Production Calendar puts every work order on its due date in month or week view. The Production Schedule is a Gantt chart: one row per work order, grouped by type of production, with a bar from planned start to planned finish filled to the percent complete, a marker on the due date and a line for today.
Colour shows the type of production — the core process of the part being made, such as Machining, Fabrication, Assembly, Finishing or Quality. That classification lives in the engineering data: parts and routings carry a core process and a sub-process (Turning, Welding, Final Assembly), maintained on a master-detail Processes page.
Attention is shown separately, by flags that the MES calculates rather than anyone typing:
- Late — the due date has passed. On the Gantt, the overrun from the due date to today is striped in red.
- Behind — progress is more than 20 points under the share of the planned-start-to-due window already gone, or the order is due within a day and under 75% done. The expected percent is shown next to the bar.
- On Hold, Not Released (still planned and due within three days) and Due Today.
- On Track — everything else.
The same flags appear on the MES home page, which now opens on This Week: every late order and everything due in the next seven days, with progress and expected progress beside each one. A planner's day starts with the orders that need a decision, not with a report.
Same rules everywhere
An order that is Behind on the home page is Behind on the calendar and on the Gantt, because all three use one calculation on the server. There is no view that disagrees with another.
Engineering Data Behind It
Execution is only as good as the master data that drives it. The engineering side of the MES covers parts, multi-level bills of materials, an interactive Visual BOM with top-down, left-to-right and indented layouts plus cost rollup and where-used, routings with setup, run, labor and machine standards, the Processes classification and an Engineering Dashboard that shows where data is missing — made parts without a BOM or a routing — before it stops a work order from releasing. Planned work orders can now be edited, and changing the part or quantity recalculates materials and operations automatically.
Built for SAP Business One Shops
SAP Business One handles production orders, inventory and costing well, but it does not put a terminal on the floor or show a supervisor where every order is in its route. Synesis MES fills that gap alongside it: work centers carry their SAP code, and ERP Data Connect brings SAP production orders, purchase orders, goods receipts, deliveries, batches and returns into the MES for reference. For our SAP Business One customers, that means the production and shop floor layer comes from the same partner that implements and supports their ERP. Manufacturers without SAP get the same complete shop floor on its own.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is shop floor control a separate product?
No. It is a module of Synesis MES and shares its database, users and audit trail. Modules can be turned on or off per customer, so a plant can start with terminals and travelers and add scheduling and engineering data later.
What hardware does the shop floor terminal need?
Any tablet or PC with a modern browser at the station, plus an optional barcode scanner for badges and travelers. The terminal is paired once with a one-time code and then runs as a full-screen kiosk.
Does Synesis MES work with SAP Business One?
Yes. ERP Data Connect brings SAP Business One production orders, purchase orders, goods receipts, deliveries, batches and returns into the MES for reference, and work centers carry their SAP work-center code.
See It Running
The fastest way to understand a shop floor system is to stand at the terminal. Explore the new Shop Floor Control and Production Calendar & Schedule pages, or book a live demo and we will walk through an order from release to the last operation — on the terminal, the Order Board and the Gantt at the same time.
