Manufacturing Visibility: What It Is and Why It Matters          

As a manufacturer, unless you know what’s happening on your shop floor in real time and solve problems promptly, it can be difficult to operate efficiently. Without manufacturing visibility, you cannot thrive amidst labor shortages, changing demand, and ever-increasing customer expectations. 

In other words, to improve manufacturing operations, accurate visibility into workflows, equipment condition, production performance, and quality is essential. When you have a better idea of what’s going on, you can prevent issues proactively and in a data-backed manner instead of troubleshooting reactively. 

So, let’s explore the importance of manufacturing visibility, its types, benefits, and how to improve the same on your factory floor. 

What Is Manufacturing Visibility? 

Manufacturing visibility essentially defines the ability to access, comprehend, and take action on real-time manufacturing data across various operations. It’s about connecting people, systems, and machines to obtain a clear view of production floor activities and whatever is happening along the value chain. 

Simply put, manufacturing visibility revolves around:

• What is occurring currently
• Why it is occurring
• What actions must be undertaken next

So, manufacturing visibility doesn’t just put together operational data from different sources (operators, machines, etc.). It also presents the same in a way that multiple organizational entities can understand and act on.

The Different Types of Visibility in Manufacturing 

Manufacturing visibility isn’t unidimensional, since different stakeholders need distinct views for effective decision-making.  Hence, the following types of visibility are required. 

1. Production Visibility 

This type of visibility helps you understand where the output stands with regard to targets and plans. It provides clarity on production counts in real time, cycle and throughput times, progress and completion of orders, and delays and bottlenecks. 

Hence, production visibility enables supervisors to detect where output is lagging and address it quickly before delays get extended. 

2. Asset and Equipment Visibility 

The availability and performance of machines go a long way in determining manufacturing efficiency. And equipment and asset visibility offers insights into the same. You get a better idea about overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), machine downtime and uptime, reasons behind stoppages, and maintenance status. 

Hence, operations and maintenance teams can take steps to improve asset life and minimize unplanned downtime. 

3. Workforce Visibility 

How smoothly manufacturing operations go depends on your human resources too, and not just equipment. And workforce visibility offers clarity on allocation and availability of operators, shift and team productivity, skills and certifications, and near-misses and accidents. 

Hence, you can improve employee engagement and training, shift scheduling, and safety outcomes.  

4. Quality Visibility

Quality visibility facilitates the early detection of deviations and defects, so you don’t end up with issues after completing production. It involves tracking defects, scrap, and reworks in real time. Quality visibility is also about root cause analysis and studying trends based on production lines, shifts, and products. 

Hence, you can prevent unnecessary reworks, expensive recalls, and customer dissatisfaction. 

5. Material and Inventory Visibility

Material shortage can disrupt production, while excess inventory might end up as waste. Luckily though, inventory visibility helps you track raw material levels, material consumption rate, work-in-progress (WIP), and inventory of finished goods. 

Hence, you can utilize resources more strategically, avoid spending on excess materials, and reduce waste.  

6. Supply Chain Visibility

Clarity only about what’s going on at the plant is not enough. You need a good idea about outbound and inbound flows too, which supply chain visibility provides. You get insights into supplier delivery, order fulfilment, changes in customer demand, and performance associated with shipping and logistics. 

Hence, procurement, manufacturing, and distribution become more aligned.  

Benefits of Manufacturing Visibility in Plant Operations 

Enhanced manufacturing visibility doesn’t just benefit your operations, but also your financial health and customer satisfaction. Here’s how. 

1. Improved Decision-Making 

Instead of waiting for reports that arrive at a shift’s or week’s end, teams can leverage real-time industrial data to make prompt, effective decisions. They can respond quickly to production problems, prioritize tasks smartly, and minimize guesswork. 

2. Better Productivity and Less Downtime 

Since reasons behind downtime are easily visible, teams can address the same systematically. They can spot recurrent stoppages, fix root causes rather than symptoms, and boost OEE and throughput. Even without extra capital investment, you can increase output.  

3. Less Waste and Enhanced Quality  

When quality issues are identified early on, defects don’t flow downstream. Teams comply more closely with standards, there is less scrap, and rework costs are reduced. Product quality is also more consistent. 

4. Greater Employee Engagement 

Being able to clearly see how their work affects performance makes operators and supervisors more engaged. They know what’s expected of them and their sense of accountability improves. Feedback loops also run faster. 

5. Augmented Operational Agility 

Since manufacturing environments change constantly, visibility helps you adapt and compete amidst volatility. You can quickly adjust schedules to accommodate changes in demand, respond to supply disruptions promptly, and scale production efficiently. 

6. Stronger Cross-Team Alignment 

Cross-functional visibility allows quality, operations, management, and maintenance teams to access a single truth source. The breaking down of silos means different teams communicate based on the same data, align around the same metrics, and effectively coordinate actions. 

Steps to Improve Manufacturing Visibility 

Improving manufacturing visibility is about combining processes, technologies, and people in a structured manner. So, you must obtain reliable, actionable, and real-time insights that drive better decision-making at every organizational level. 

Here’s what to do. 

1. Define Visibility Goals Clearly 

Make sure you are clear about why you require better visibility. For instance, ask:

• Which operational issues cause maximum waste, downtime, or delays?
• Where do teams lack correct or timely information? 
• What decisions are delayed or being taken on the basis of incomplete data? 

This will help you channel visibility improvement efforts towards real business impact. Your goals might include:

• Better OEE and throughput
• Reduced unplanned downtime
• Better team alignment around day-to-day performance 
• Early detection of quality issues 

2. Connect Crucial Sources of Data 

Is your manufacturing data spread across systems that exist in silos and don’t communicate well? Then connect such systems or data sources to draw a full picture for teams and improve visibility. Data sources might typically include Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, IoT sensors, maintenance tools, manufacturing execution systems (MES), quality systems etc. 

3. Standardize Definitions, Metrics, and KPIs

Inconsistent data interpretation can make it challenging to improve manufacturing visibility. Hence, define standard KPIs such as cycle time, downtime, scrap, and OEE. Also ensure metrics are calculated in a similar fashion across plants, lines, and shifts. Ensure there’s no confusion about what planned downtime involves vis-à-vis unplanned. 

4. Collect Data in Real Time 

Eliminate spreadsheets that are updated after hours or days and look beyond manual reports generated at the end of shifts. Wherever possible, automate data collection so it happens in real time. Enable operators to enter events and reasons in a simple and quick way where applicable. This way, you can fix problems as they crop up. 

5. Create Dashboards Based on Roles

Not every organizational entity needs to look at the same dashboards or data points, since their roles and responsibilities are different. Hence, visibility systems should be role-based, so different teams can view information that is relevant to them, easy to understand, and actionable. 

For instance:

• Operators need to view alerts, performance, and present targets
• Supervisors need information on bottlenecks, problems, and shift performance  
• Managers need to look at KPIs, trends, and strategic insights 

6. Implement Alerts 

Manufacturing visibility is not about passive observation, but rather action-taking. So, instead of continuously monitoring dashboards, your teams need to concentrate on what’s most important. Consider implementing the following: 

• Automatic alerts for instances when KPIs don’t meet thresholds 
• Notifications for deviations in quality, downtime, and safety risks
• Clear paths for escalating unresolved problems 

7. Encourage Data-Backed Collaboration 

With cross-functional visibility, teams can focus on solving problems rather than blaming each other. And it can only happen when they work with data together. So, what to do?

• Allow cross-functional teams to get their hands on the same performance-related data
• Share dashboards during the stand-ups conducted every day
• Use digital logs to document problems along with corrective steps 

8. Promote Data Literacy  

To enhance manufacturing visibility, ensure your teams can trust the data, know why it’s important, and can interpret it accurately. Impart training to supervisors and operators on dashboards and KPIs. Provide clarity on how data is linked to everyday decisions. And encourage teams to share feedback on the accuracy of data and ask questions.  

9. Scale Gradually  

Instead of digitizing everything for better visibility at once, adopt a phased approach that instills confidence in teams and minimizes complications. Begin with a single process, line, or KPI and validate data usability and accuracy. Highlight and explain quick wins and then expand digitization slowly across the plant. 

10.  Improve Continuously   

Improving manufacturing visibility is not a one-and-done affair. Constant refinement is essential to make sure visibility is always in line with evolving organizational goals. So, review KPIs and dashboards regularly and tweak thresholds as performance gets better. Also, as operations evolve, keep incorporating new sources of data. 

Manufacturing Visibility and the Future of Operations 

Better manufacturing visibility is the key to solving issues proactively, collaborating more effectively, enhancing performance, and strengthening the bottom line. Be it productivity, quality, equipment, or supply chain, better insights give your business a unique competitive edge.   

And with fabriq’s completely customizable digital dashboards, you can effortlessly view data in real time, boost communication, escalate issues, address performance gaps, and do more. 

So, are you ready to reap the perks of improved manufacturing visibility – from better product quality and smarter decision-making to greater productivity and enhanced agility?

Take the next step in manufacturing visibility with fabriq and turn real-time shop floor data into aligned, actionable performance insights.