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Process file · Manufacturing
Manufacturing
What’s inside: monitoring · savings measurement
06:30: figures from MES and ERP; the why unwritten
The question this file answersWhy does my shift supervisor spend the first hour of every day rebuilding yesterday's numbers in Excel?
Fits: plants where the daily and weekly production report is still assembled by hand from MES and ERP exports — a daily, weekly and monthly cycle with no off-season
Not for: plants already on a live MES dashboard that management actually reads — the assembly is not your cost; the commentary is, and that stays human either way
Typical day
What the desk looks like today
Typical, from the manufacturing playbook. The shift data is already in the MES and the ERP — output, downtime, scrap, quality holds. Every morning a supervisor exports it, pastes it into last week's Excel, fixes the broken cells, adds the commentary, mails the file and tracks actions in a second sheet. LNS Research (2023) puts that assembly at 8–15 hours a week per production manager. The cycle is daily, weekly and monthly, so it never stops; it hurts most when the supervisor is on holiday and the report goes out late, or wrong.
What changes
What Monday looks like after
At 06:30 the daily report already exists: yesterday's output, downtime and quality figures pulled from the MES and the ERP, the anomalies marked, a draft commentary underneath. The supervisor reads it, corrects the one line the model misread, and writes the sentence that matters — why line 3 stopped. Management gets the same report at the same time every day, not when someone finished Excel. The supervisor does not lose the report; they lose the hour of assembling it. LNS Research (2023) reports 8–15 hours a week per production manager on assembled reporting; expect the assembly to shrink, and the “why” to stay exactly as human as it is now.
Typical, not a measured client result. Every figure here comes from the playbook source named below.
~60–70%
of standard production reporting automatable — Gartner (2023)
Before: a supervisor rebuilds the daily pack in Excel every shift. After: Gartner (2023) puts 60–70% of standard production reporting within reach of automation — the sentence under the chart stays human.
Where this number comes from
Gartner “Manufacturing Analytics” (2023) reports that 60–70% of standard production reporting can be automated; LNS Research (2023) puts the saving at 8–15 hours a week per production manager. Playbook range 50–70%. An industry range, not our measurement.
What we install
What we put in front of the systems you already run
Your MES and ERP stay the source — Siemens Opcenter, Rockwell, AVEVA or Plex; SAP S/4HANA, Oracle, Dynamics or Infor; or whatever you run. We add a reporting step that runs on a clock:
- the figures are pulled from MES and ERP through their interfaces at a set time — no export, no paste
- your existing template is filled in your layout
- anomalies against previous shifts are marked — a line that stopped, a scrap rate that jumped
- a draft commentary is written from the numbers only, labelled as a draft
- the report goes to the same distribution list once the supervisor has read it.
First in scope: the one daily report everybody already reads.
What stays human — and what this will not do
Root cause. What to change on the line. Which improvement programme actually moves. The sentence under the chart.
What can go wrong — and what we do about it
If the MES and ERP disagree about yesterday — a work order closed in one, open in the other — the report shows the gap, and the first weeks surface data hygiene. An older MES without an interface means a scheduled export instead of a live pull, which your IT must maintain. The draft commentary is written from numbers; it cannot know that line 3 stopped because a fitter was off sick — that sentence is the supervisor's, always. Gartner's 60–70% is for standard reporting; root cause and improvement decisions are outside it.
How long it takes, and what we need from you
Audit, about two weeks (€1.5–3K): we sit with a supervisor through one morning's report, list every figure and where it comes from, and check what MES and ERP will give us through an interface. Pilot, 2–4 weeks (€10–20K) — low complexity in the manufacturing playbook: one daily report, one plant, the supervisor reads every edition before it goes out. Production: the weekly and monthly reports, then trend flags. From you: read access to MES and ERP, the current Excel template, a month of past reports.
The path: free 60-second estimate → free 20-minute review → paid audit of this one process (€1.5–3K, typically two weeks) → pilot with your people in the loop (€10–20K, weeks, not quarters). No transformation programme. Prices are public, on the services page →
This is about you if…
- Is the daily production report still built in Excel from MES or ERP exports?
- Does one supervisor spend the first hour of the shift on it, every day?
- Are the figures already in an MES or ERP that an interface can read?
What does this mean in euros?
That depends on your volumes and wage costs — this page will not invent the number. The free 60-second estimate runs that calculation from your answers, with every multiplier sourced.
Not a named Aperanda client. Process file · Manufacturing.
Deep-dive process file. Volumes, weeks and sources come from the industry playbook; nothing here is a named client.
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