Most factory owners do not start by searching for a system. They start with a symptom: shipments that slip without a clear reason, numbers that do not agree, a floor that looks busy while output stays flat. What you want is to work out which problem you actually have, what is causing it, and where to start — before anyone sells you a solution to a different one. This page is a diagnostic guide: each symptom, its usual causes, what to measure to confirm it, and the detailed article that deals with it.
It is written from garment and light-assembly floors, where these problems are most common, but most of it applies to any factory that makes products through a sequence of stages.
The symptoms, and where each one points
| What you see | Usual cause | What to measure first | Read next |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nobody can say quickly where an order is | Progress is recorded on paper, in a group chat, or not at all | Time taken to answer "where is order X?" | Paper, WhatsApp and old Windows programs |
| Output below plan with no clear reason | A bottleneck operation, or lost time nobody records | Hourly output, and work waiting at each operation | Finding the bottleneck on a sewing line |
| Efficiency looks fine but shipments are late | Wrong standard minutes, or lost time hidden inside the figure | Overall against on-standard efficiency | How garment factories calculate production efficiency |
| Counts disagree between cutting, sewing and packing | Handovers between stages not recorded by both sides | Every count disagreement for one week | Paper, WhatsApp and old Windows programs |
| Fabric runs short, or consumption beats the costing | Marker, lay-end, roll and defect losses not tracked per order | Fabric issued against fabric accounted for, per cut order | Fabric waste in garment cutting |
| Defects found at final inspection | Quality recorded late and away from the operation that caused it | Defects at final inspection traced back to their operation | Paper, WhatsApp and old Windows programs |
| Planning done from memory | No live view of work in progress per line | How often a plan changes because a line was not where it was thought to be | What an MES is, and whether your factory needs one |
| Costs of an order known only after it ships | Stage progress and cost kept in separate places | Expected against actual cost for the last few orders | What an MES is |
Four problems underneath most of the symptoms
Read down the table and the same few causes keep appearing.
Progress is recorded late, or not at all
Paper tally sheets, messages in a group and a program in the office all share one weakness: they record what happened hours after it happened, by someone other than the person who saw it. Every decision on the floor is then made from yesterday's picture or from memory.
Handovers leave no trace
When one stage hands work to the next without both sides confirming the quantity, a shortage cannot be located. It turns into a recount and an argument, and the real cause — a lost bundle, a rejected batch never replaced, a short roll — is never found.
Lost time is invisible
Waiting for material, machine breakdowns and style changes are rarely recorded with a reason and a duration. Without that record, lost time disappears into a low efficiency figure and is blamed on the people sewing rather than on the cause.
Stages and costs live in different places
Most factories know their stages and know their costs, but in two places that never meet. An overrun on an order is then discovered at the end, when nothing can be done about it.
Paper-based tracking in particular
Paper is not the problem in itself. A well-designed paper form, filled in at the operation and collected every hour, can run a small floor well. Paper becomes the problem when the forms travel: when they are photographed and posted, typed into another system, summarised by someone who was not there, and read a day later. At that point every number exists in three versions and none is current. If your floor runs on paper, the question to ask is not whether to replace paper but how many hours pass between a form being filled in and a decision being made from it.
How to diagnose your own floor in one week
You do not need a system to find out which of these problems you have. For one week, on one line, record:
- Every stoppage: when it started, when someone who could fix it responded, when it ended, and why.
- Every count disagreement between stages, and how long it took to settle.
- Every request for an order's status, and how long the answer took.
- Work waiting at each operation, counted three times a day.
- Fabric issued and fabric accounted for, for every cut order that week.
At the end of the week, the largest numbers tell you where to start. The articles linked above go deeper into each one.
When a system is the answer, and when it is not
If your floor has one line and the owner is on it all day, better paper forms and a daily meeting may be all you need. A system earns its place when there are several lines or shifts, several orders on the floor at once, buyers asking for status and traceability, and an owner who can no longer see everything from where they stand. When you reach that point, what an MES is explains what such a system does, and comparing business software on evidence explains how to choose one.
The next step
Run the one-week diagnosis above on your busiest line. Softwiro builds and operates production tracking for factories — Production Manager, ProTrack and MESwiro are running in production today — and if you send us your week's numbers, we will tell you which problem we would solve first, including when the answer is not a system.
Sources
- Lean Manufacturing Techniques for the Ready-Made Garments Industry — International Labour Organization, Cairo office. Bottlenecks, line balance and waste on garment floors.
- What are the 7 wastes in lean? — Lean Enterprise Institute. Waiting, defects and other waste.
- ISA-95 Standard: Enterprise-Control System Integration — International Society of Automation. How floor operations relate to business planning.