The Best Shop Floor Management Software
We tested and ranked the best shop floor management solutions for companies of all sizes. These platforms focus on key features like work order management, real-time visibility, and materials management.
- Allows for real-time communication among team members
- Users can attach files, videos, and operating procedures to tasks
- Streamlines manufacturing operations
- Real-time visibility into the manufacturing process
- Integration with other systems for improved efficiency and productivity
- Affordable, transparent pricing
- Real-time inventory tracking across locations
- Data-driven decision-making support
We’ve used our in-depth software review methodology to test dozens of the top systems, helping you choose the perfect solution to boost productivity and meet business goals.
- Parsable: Best Digital Work Instructions
- DELMIAWorks: Best Real-Time Visibility
- Katana MRP: Best for Small Businesses
- MachineMetrics: Best for Predictive Analytics
- Rover ERP: Best for Customization
- MRPeasy: Most User Friendly
- QT9 ERP: Best for Health Sciences
- MasterControl: Best for Compliance
- Global Shop Solutions: Best for Manufacturing ERP
Parsable - Best Digital Work Instructions
Parsable offers comprehensive digital work instruction features designed to enhance shop floor management by providing accessible and clear guidance to frontline workers. Your employees can easily create and upload content, allowing for quick adaptation to evolving standard operating procedures and regulations.
You can include images, videos, and animations to enrich your instructions, making complex tasks more engaging and understandable to workers. You can also utilize clickable buttons, hyperlinks, and checklists to create dynamic content that facilitates user interaction and ensures thorough task completion.
These instructions are deployed to frontline workers’ mobile devices, providing real-time, step-by-step guidance. As shop floor staff perform tasks, the platform collects data on their execution, allowing you to monitor compliance and analyze performance metrics.
DELMIAWorks - Best Real-Time Visibility
DELMIAWorks is known for its efficiency-enhancing capabilities. As a manufacturing execution system (MES) developed by Dassault Systèmes, we found it offers a comprehensive range of features such as inventory barcoding, customizable reporting, and shop floor control. What sets DELMIAWorks apart is its ability to provide real-time visibility into the manufacturing process, enabling manufacturers to easily identify bottlenecks and optimize production for maximum efficiency.
However, some users have reported drawbacks with DELMIAWorks, such as its reliance on Microsoft Remote Desktop for application access and the lack of a web interface. Despite these minor cons, the software remains a top choice for businesses seeking a solution that streamlines manufacturing operations while providing real-time insights.
Katana MRP - Best for Small Businesses
Katana MRP offers real-time inventory management, production optimization, and data-driven insights to help businesses reduce manufacturing costs and improve efficiency.
One of the standout features of Katana MRP is its custom API integrations, which allow for seamless communication with various tools, including:
- E-commerce platforms
- Accounting software
- CRM systems
- Reporting tools
- Automation software
With its user-friendly interface and powerful features, Katana MRP is the top choice for small and medium-sized manufacturers looking to streamline their operations and make data-driven decisions.
MachineMetrics - Best for Predictive Analytics
MachineMetrics, a manufacturing analytics platform, provides real-time insights into machine performance, earning its place as a standout performer in shop floor management software. By collecting and analyzing machine data, including:
- Performance
- Health
- Breakdowns
- Changeovers
- Quality loss
- Downtime
MachineMetrics enables manufacturers to optimize their operations and reduce downtime.
The platform’s predictive analytics capabilities are particularly valuable, allowing manufacturers to anticipate maintenance needs and prevent costly breakdowns. While pricing information for MachineMetrics is not readily available, its impressive features and real-time data analysis make it a top choice for businesses seeking to optimize their manufacturing processes and stay ahead of the curve.
Rover ERP - Best for Customization
Rover ERP, a cloud manufacturing software known for its customizability, offers a broad range of features and modules to streamline and automate business processes, distinguishing itself in the shop floor management software market. With Rover ERP, businesses can:
- Track inventory
- Manage sales and purchases
- Handle financial transactions
- Generate reports for better decision-making
The software’s high level of customization enables businesses to tailor the system to their specific needs, making it an excellent choice for companies with unique requirements.
While Rover ERP may require some training for new users and falls on the higher end of the price spectrum, its powerful features and customization options make it a top choice for businesses seeking a robust and adaptable shop floor management solution.
MRPeasy - Most User Friendly
MRPeasy provides small manufacturers with comprehensive functionality and a user-friendly interface. Some key features of MRPeasy include project management, production planning, inventory management, CRM, and procurement.
With these features, MRPeasy streamlines production processes, tracks manufacturing costs, and improves efficiency by effectively managing production data.
One of the standout features of MRPeasy is its seamless integration with popular accounting systems like Xero and Shopify, making it easy to manage all aspects of the manufacturing process and eliminate manual data entry. With its user-friendly design and powerful features, MRPeasy is an excellent choice for small businesses looking for a comprehensive manufacturing software solution.
QT9 ERP - Best for Health Sciences
QT9 ERP, a lesser-known entity in the shop floor management software market, offers a host of benefits and features waiting to be tapped into by businesses. Designed for life sciences, medical device manufacturers, pharmaceuticals, and biotech industries, QT9 ERP consolidates various business processes. It provides comprehensive features in inventory and supply chain management, sales management, and value-added services.
Although it may not be as well-known as some other options on our list, QT9 ERP is worth considering for businesses seeking a powerful and versatile shop floor management solution.
“Hot Links” for quick navigation
MasterControl - Best for Compliance
MasterControl, known for its focus on compliance, offers a top-tier Quality Management System (QMS) designed specifically for the Life Sciences industry, cementing its place in the shop floor management software market. With comprehensive features and tools, MasterControl helps organizations streamline their quality processes and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements.
One of the standout features of MasterControl is its seamless integration between the Documents and Training modules, allowing for efficient collaboration and ensuring that employees are properly trained and qualified. Although some users have reported issues with system upgrades and a lack of a complete training compliance report, MasterControl remains a top choice for businesses in the Life Sciences industry seeking a powerful and efficient QMS solution.
Global Shop Solutions - Best for Manufacturing ERP
Global Shop Solutions offers extensive integration capabilities. It can support a wide range of third-party integrations, such as ADP GlobalView Payroll, SAP Concur, Microsoft 365, and Salesforce CMS. It’s a good fit for small—to medium-sized manufacturers in various industries, including automotive, aerospace, oil and gas, and medical devices.
What is Shop Floor Management Software?
Shop floor management software maintains production data and documentation through batch records, calibrations, and recipe management. Also known as shop floor control software, this type of demand planning software streamlines visual scheduling that lets you track shop floor operations such as production data, standard operating procedures (SOPs), change controls, quality control, traceability, and more.
This visual front-end provides manufacturers with increased performance control. When linked with a manufacturing execution system (MES) software, workers on the plant floor will be able to stay more informed through real-time access to shop floor activities. This includes identifying production inefficiencies, SPC data, inventory adjustments, downtime reporting, label printing, and work order details.
By integrating shop floor management capabilities directly with your material resource planning (MRP) software, you’ll be able to manage shop floor operators, manage upcoming manufacturing order tasks, reassign tasks based on priority, manage time spent on each step of the work order, and more. Equipment calibration can route tasks to the appropriate personnel for audits or inspections that may be required before completing important jobs.
Navigating the Market
Examining various solutions’ features, pricing, and user reviews will help you pinpoint the best software for your business, paving the way for a seamless production process.
When selecting a shop floor management software, it is important to consider aspects such as:
- Functionality
- Real-time data
- Integration
- User-based permissions
- Scalability
- Cost
Each software option listed above offers unique advantages and features that cater to different manufacturing needs. By comparing these options and considering your specific requirements, you can make an informed decision and invest in a software solution to help your business grow and thrive.
By meticulously assessing your business needs, comparing features, pricing, and user reviews, and contemplating the unique advantages of each software solution, you can zero in on the ideal shop floor control software.
A shop floor management system will help streamline manufacturing processes, enhance efficiency, and boost profit margins by effectively utilizing shop floor data.
Key Features
- Production Monitoring: Monitor production performances and identify production inefficiencies. Define performance and measurement parameters for each item or tooling configuration. Receive job-specific statistics or entire work center performance efforts. Break down production feedback into total parts created, production time, downtime, scrap, rejects, parts remaining to be produced, and more.
- Production Planning: Plan production on your shop floor by determining the need for materials and capacity to complete a manufacturing production order. Create a highly detailed master production schedule that accounts for resource, staffing, and inventory needs to complete and optimize production.
- Inventory Management: Track finished goods and material availability by allocating raw materials to production or finished goods to sales orders. Move inventory to and from locations depending on need.
- Bill of Materials: Specifies the raw materials, parts, and sub-assemblies needed to manufacture each specific product. Make automatic inventory adjustments and help calculate manufacturing costs.
- Task Management: Create to-do lists and assign tasks to various departments or specific employees. Optimize time and resources by giving full visibility of the project lifecycle and who is responsible at each step within a manufacturing work order.
Benefits
Manage and Reduce Manufacturing Costs
Manufacturing production systems such as shop floor management software can only perform as well as the data entered into it.
- Older systems required a hefty amount of manual data entry–meaning the solution would only be as beneficial to your business as quickly as you could key in data. And there’s plenty of paperwork and spreadsheets.
- Newer systems tend to alleviate these production costs through automation tools–meaning your workers are spending less time entering data and identifying areas where productivity needs improvement. Digitizing records allows for paperless operations, further decreasing on-the-job waste.
Run “What If” Analysis Scenarios
What-if scenarios let manufacturing managers analyze key performance indicators (KPIs), visualize production scheduling outcomes, and look for potential disruptions.
Examples of disruptions include a lack of supply, meaning the scenarios examine inventory management, facility capacity, and your overall supply chain. When production schedules can be visualized before being implemented, you can test out different variables and choose the best production scheduling method.
Accurate demand planning in shop floor management is beneficial for short-term and long-term planning, as it helps visualize and locate disruptions in production and offers cost-effective methods to complete processes. This involves collecting historical data on metrics like order volumes and inventory turns while mixing it with continually updated forecasts from your sales personnel.
Maintain Shipment Dates
Shop floor control systems allow you to identify your projected ship dates for manufacturing orders quickly. This is a huge asset when taking new orders–giving you a date you can quote to a customer and a promise you can live by.
With late shipments come paying overtime to employees to meet deadlines or breaking promises to customers with late shipments–which could negatively impact future business.
Real-time production data tracking can release WIP orders by knowing when they will be complete. When bottlenecks occur in production (which at times are inevitable), adjustments can be made to your production schedule and some jobs can be routed to available resources. Also known as constraint management, this covers activities that are delayed due to resource capacity and/or material availability limits.
Integrate with ERP Systems
Shop floor management systems are a great addition to your existing manufacturing ERP software environments. Integration wizards are included in a few shop floor control solutions and may aid with data collection for other systems, such as CRM software.
Alternatively, an SFM software vendor may specialize in integrating their solution with a specific ERP or MES. The biggest benefit of complete integration with other business management systems is having a complete view of your operations.
Businesses want to avoid duplicate entries or data transfers from one system to another whenever they receive new sales orders, hire new workers, or purchase new machines. They want a system that seamlessly transfers data from the planning and scheduling phase into their ERP solution.
