Manufacton User Interface

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Summary

Manufacton has been designed as an enterprise wide, off-site and on-site material and prefab production management and installation tool.

For this reason, the interface ultimately serves everyone in that supply-chain, but rarely does any single person in the supply chain leverage the entire interface.

This Overview will provide a high level review of the interface including:

Please also see the knowledgebase article on hardware considerations.

 

Definition of Terms

Items

Items are the fundamental building block of Manufacton.  Items represent the physical things and represent purchased materials or manufactured prefabs.

Items are found in Material Orders, Production Orders, Shipping Orders and in Inventory.

Orders

Order are the "vehicles" in which items are move through the process. 

Production Orders hold the prefab items within them.  As orders are moved through Coordination, Detailing, Manufacturing, QA and Shipping, those items can be split into separate orders, merged with other orders or moved separately from the other items within the order through the production process.

Similarly, Material Orders hold the purchased (non-prefabricated) items and move those items through the Requesting, Sourcing and Ordering process into Inventory for production or directly to the job site.

Every order MUST have at least one item associated with them to move forward from Prefab Planning or Material Requesting.

Work Steps

In Production Management, "Work Steps" represent the production steps items must go through to be produced.  For some production processes, a single Work Step can be used to track this progress. for others, upwards of 50 work steps are required to track all of the steps to the level of granularity required to understand progress.

Some typical Work Steps include (but is not limited to) such things as:

  • Cut
  • Weld
  • Paint
  • Assemble
  • Inspect
  • Connect

 

General Interface

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The interface has several basic elements to it:

  1. The Main Menu
    • All of the Modules, Dashboards, and Administrative functions are found on the main menu
  2. Collapsible menu icon
    • For experienced users, more browser real-estate can be achieved by collapsing the main menu to show only the icons
  3. User Settings
    • Personal settings are managed under the user settings such as:
      • Name
      • Image
      • Password
      • Navigation preferences
      • Homepage preferences
      • Third-Party Plugin authorization
      • Notification preferences
  1. Search
    • Context searches for Orders, Items, etc. can be performed - the results depend on where in the application the search is conducted
  2. QR Scanner
    • Computers configured with a camera can scan Manufacton QR code to optimize the workflow
  3. Top Level Project Selector
  4. Build Number and Release Date
  5. Manufacton Resource Center:
    • Onboarding Modules
    • Feature Guides
    • Announcements
    • Search Knowledgebase
    • Support Resources
  6. Tabs
    • Active tab is white
    • Inactive tab(s) are black
  7. Toolbar
    • Only tools specific to the Module and Tab selected will be available.
    • This toolbar generally establishes how the data will be displayed
  8. Action Bar
    • Not all tools will be shown at once - only the tools that make sense for the given situation will be made available while using Manufacton.
    • A general list of the tools include:

Add - Add new Prefab Planning packages, Production Orders, Items, Work Steps, etc.
Import - Manufacton supports import from standard excel or csv documents
Export - Manufacton supports export or excel documents from various parts of the interface Kit Import - Manufacton supports import of Kits from excel documents
Bulk Actions (including):

Remove/Archive - Items and Orders can be removed from the system
Print QR Labels - Batch Print QR Labels
Create Production Orders -In the Planning stage, it is possible to bulk create Production Orders from items within multiple planning cards into Coordination, Detailing or Manufacturing
Delete Orders – Batch delete multiple orders at one time
Import - Date Management / Calendar tools
Move Backward - Orders that require rework in a previous stage can be moved back in the process
Move Forwards- Orders that are complete in the current stage can be moved on to the next stage.
     Note:  A maximum of 50 orders can be moved at any one time,
Adjust - In inventory, adjustments to quantities up or down can be made
Move to Inventory - Completed items can be moved into inventory
Create Shipment - Completed items can be moved into Shipments

  1. Column Chooser - Each module has a different set of columns that can be shown, customizations to which columns are shown can be made here.  Many of the columns support Alpha-numeric sorting when the column is clicked on.  Multiple columns can be selected by holding the <CTRL> button and selecting additional columns.  The first column selected will be the "Primary" sort column, each subsequent column will be the next in the sorting hierarchy.
  2. Column Headers
  3. Action Column
    • Actions which can be taken on individual order will be available in the Action Column – Where there are more than one action which can be taken, an ellipse (“…”) will be available to show all the possible options
  4. Filter Bar - One of the most powerful tools in Manufacton are the filters.  Each Module has a slightly different set of filters available to them including Projects and Dateto narrow down the list of items or orders being displayed
  5. Clear Filters button

 

Modules

Dashboard

The Dashboard module contains high-level cross-project information intended for Management and Executives.  The dashboards provide a quick view of some of the most critical aspects of how project are progressing:

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Resources

The Resources module includes cross-project access to:

  • Forms and form reports (see the KB on Form and Form Builder for more information on this topic).
  • Notifications
    • With the ability to show notifications for all of the projects you are a member of for all team members or just for yourself.
  • Recent Events
    • With the ability to show recent changes of orders Stage, Date Changes, and
  • Tasks (f/k/a “Checklists”)

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Project Planner, Material Manager, and Production Manager

The Order interface for the module where items are created, Project Planner, Production Manager & Material Manager, are very similar.  They initiate as list views that allow for an individual order to be opened.

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Once opened, they are configured similarly as well

  1. Order Level Information
  2. Detailed Information
    • Notes
    • Documents
    • Tags
    • etc.
  3. Supporting data
    • Item Level Information
    • Work Steps (prefabs only)
    • Materials (prefabs only)
    • Tasks
  4. Actions

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Supply Chain Manager

For the most part, the Supply Chain Manager Module is a list of views of Production Orders and Items and Material Orders and Items.  Within this list view, the orders:

  1. can be expanded to get a bit more information regarding the order.
  2. opened to get to the details of those orders, exactly as if they had been opened from their own modules

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Shipping Orders

Shipping Orders are a part of Supply Chain Manager, but the orders look and behave a little differently.

The shipments contain the following:

  1. Shipping name
  2. Documents & Notes
  3. Associated Project
  4. From Location
  5. To Location
  6. Desired Ship/Deliver Date
  7. Recipient
  8. Shipment owner
  9. Shipping List (Optional - to send a manifest to up to 5 internal or external recipients)
  10. The list of items to be included in the shipments

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App & Project Setup

The App & Project Setup module enables administrators to configure the system, and manage projects and users.

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Here's a quick (3 minute) video on the User Interface:

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