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The whiteboard, digitized. And live.

A scheduling board that replaces whiteboards and spreadsheets: orders assigned to machines, progress measured from the machine's own signals, and planning and operations working from one truth. No typing on the floor. No debate in the morning meeting.

Request a demo bring this week's orders · we put them on the board See the board ↓

Visual Factories scheduling board: machine timeline with assigned orders, unassigned tasks and due dates

Real timeprogress from machine signals

2 ways inERP gateway or csv/xls upload

Daily PDFautomatic report to management

The problem

The plan lives on a whiteboard. Reality lives on the floor.

Most plants still dispatch from a whiteboard, a spreadsheet or a printout. It is right at 7 a.m. and wrong by 9. Nobody knows which order is actually running, how far it is, or that the delivery is already lost.

The board goes stale the moment the shift starts

A breakdown, a rush order, a missing tool — and the whiteboard no longer describes the floor. Updating it means walking, asking and rewriting.

Planning and operations argue about what happened

Supervisor spreadsheets and end-of-shift reports. Production numbers debated daily, explained from memory.

Late is discovered when it is already late

Progress is not measured, it is estimated. By the time someone notices an order is behind, the promise to the customer is gone.

A schedule nobody can check against reality is a wish list.

What you get

One board. Planning assigns it, the floor sees it, the machines report it.

Real-time management at your fingertips: monitor, control, decide — and communicate between planning and operations without a single phone call.

Scheduling board — machine timeline and unassigned tasks

01 · Scheduling board

Assign orders to machines on a live timeline

Drag an order from the unassigned list onto a machine. Due dates, sequence and load are visible at a glance — and every task carries its real status.

AssignedProductionCompletedOverlappingDelayedPlanned Downtime

Visual Factories real-time monitor on the shop floor

02 · Real-time monitor

The floor sees the current order and the next

Progress comes from the machine's electrical signals, not from what someone typed. When the board changes, the floor monitor changes. When the machine runs, the board knows.

Visual Factories daily PDF report — productivity by quantity and root-cause analysis

03 · Reports

Daily PDF to management. Orders report on demand.

Every morning: quantity vs target per hour, cycle-time Pareto per part, operator time usage and productivity, per-machine detail with stop reasons. Orders and analytics reports on demand for the weekly review.

Data entry

Two ways in for the plan. One way in for reality.

Orders arrive the way your plant already works. Actuals arrive from the machines. Nobody types the same number twice.

1 · ERP gateway

Orders flow in automatically

Work orders from the ERP appear on the board; completed quantities flow back. No re-keying, no second system to maintain.

2 · csv/xls upload

Start this week, no integration

Export the order list you already have, upload it, dispatch. The fastest way to replace the whiteboard — and a full plan for the demo.

Actuals · from the machine

Progress measured, not reported

Through the electrical signals every machine has — an IoT device the machine electrician installs in under an hour, the Universal Adapter in the cloud reads the rest. Cycle counts, running, stopped: live on the board without anyone touching a keyboard.

Operator checking the next order on a Visual Factories kiosk between the presses

How it works

Plan it. Dispatch it. Watch it happen.

The board closes the loop between the office and the floor — every hour, not every morning.

01 · Plan

Orders on the board

From the ERP or a csv/xls file. Due dates and quantities attached. The unassigned list shows what still needs a home.

02 · Dispatch

Assign to machines

Drag, sequence, save. The floor monitors update instantly — operators see the current order and what comes next.

03 · Run

Progress from the signals

Counts and states come from the machine. Status turns to Production, Partly done, Completed — or Delayed, before anyone has to ask.

04 · Adjust

Decide with facts

Overlapping or delayed orders light up. Re-sequence in seconds, and the morning report explains the shift with numbers, not memory.

Same platform

The board runs on the same data as your OEE.

Scheduling & Dispatching is one application of the Visual Factories platform. The same connection that feeds the board feeds OEE improvement, tool-life monitoring and the AI agent that turns losses into tasks. Connect once; add applications as you go.

See the OEE Improvement application →

Managers reviewing Visual Factories data on a tablet

What changes

Replace manual reporting with machine data.

Today

Whiteboard or spreadsheet, rewritten every shift
Production numbers debated daily
Losses explained from memory
Late orders discovered at delivery

With Visual Factories

One digital board — office and floor see the same thing
Automatic, machine-generated progress
One source of truth, trusted by the floor
Delays visible while there is still time to act

Who uses it

Planner

Dispatches in minutes

Load and sequence on one screen. Changes reach the floor the moment they are saved.

Supervisor

Runs the shift by exception

Delayed and overlapping orders stand out. Walk to the problem, not to every machine.

Operator

Always knows what is next

Current order and the one after on the monitor. No paper, no waiting for instructions.

Plant manager

Gets the truth every morning

The daily PDF: what was planned, what was made, where the hours went — before the meeting starts.

Free download

Scheduling & Dispatching overview

The board, the real-time monitor, the reports and the two ways to get your orders in — on two pages, for planners and plant managers who want to retire the whiteboard.

PDF · 2 pages · includes the "is my plant ready" checklist