Harald Büchel
Principal Consultant at KUMAVISION
In production and plant engineering projects, a single missing screw, an overloaded machine, or a delayed order picking process can often determine whether deadlines are met and the project succeeds. At the same time, data volumes are growing: bills of materials, work plans, inventory levels, capacities, and logistics processes run in parallel – often from different perspectives.365 This complexity is met with a clear principle: traffic light control. The traffic light concept translates scheduling, capacity, and logistical information into immediately understandable terms.
Executive Summary: What does the traffic light concept achieve?
The traffic light system in factory365 It is a central visual control aid for design, planning, manufacturing, and logistics. It enables:
- Dispositive transparency regarding material availability,
- Capacity-based safeguarding of jobs and departments,
- logistical control of order picking progress,
- as well as a realistic overall assessment through a consistent inheritance logic.
Complex decisions are no longer made using tables, but rather... color-driven The results range from green (ready for production) to red (urgent action required).
Execution monitoring: Central information hub
The centerpiece of the traffic light concept is the Execution monitoring in factory365It combines design, planning and manufacturing in a common overview and is divided into two perspectives:
1. Design supervision
Here is the Master data view in focus:
Bills of materials and work plans are checked for processing status and completeness. The goal is to ensure that the production basis is clean and approved.
2. Disposition monitoring
From a planning perspective, Manufacturing bills of materials and work steps compared to the actual resources:
- material availability
- Capacities
- Events
- Procurement channels
This is exactly where the availability indicators come into play.
This transforms a task into a transparently manageable project.
The operational availability indicator
Is the material actually there and available? The availability indicator answers a key question regarding scheduling: Is the required material supply secured by the necessary date?
The rating is based on:
- current stock level
- planned additions (orders, transfers),
- existing reservations.
Logic of color coding
- Green: Positive availability balance from inventory
- Yellow: Covered material availability, but dependent on future deliveries
- Warning symbolReservation conflict against receipts
- RedMaterial not available for the appointment
Harald Büchel, Principal Consultant in Portfolio Management at KUMAVISION AG explains: “A key principle is the inheritance logic: assemblies automatically inherit the status of their weakest component. If a single part is missing, the entire assembly is marked as critical – this ensures a realistic and practical view of actual delivery capability.”
The capacitive availability indicator
Are there enough machines and personnel? Besides materials, capacity is the second bottleneck. The capacity indicator compares the capacity requirements of an order with the resources stored in the calendar for workstations, workstation groups, and departments.
Two monitoring modes help with better assessment:
Without threshold values:
- GreenDemand ≤ available capacity
- RedDemand > available capacity
With threshold values (min/max):
- GreenBelow the minimum capacity
- Yellow: Within the tolerable target corridor
- Red: Above maximum capacity
Especially in project and plant engineering, this enables early identification of overload situations, even before deadlines are missed.
The picking traffic light
Transparency in warehousing and logistics. The picking traffic light is a specialized tool for warehouse logistics. It indicates the progress of material retrieval for an order – from open demand to completed picking. Updates are always performed via "Calculate availability traffic light" or through configured job routines.
Typical status indicators
- Red with an exclamation mark: not selectable
- Yellow: partially available
- Green: fully pickable
- Blue: in progress (logistics document created)
- Green with a hookOrder picking completed
A big advantage:
This traffic light system is visible not only in production but also in logistics documents – for example, in outgoing goods or on picking worksheets. This significantly improves cross-departmental communication.
Ensuring quality with the E+D change proposal
Another key element of the traffic light concept is the E+D amendment proposal (based on the Edevelopment and DImplementation order).
He ensures that changes to bills of materials or work plans are incorporated into ongoing orders in a controlled manner during the project period.
- The software detects deviations,
- Changes will be marked as New / Change / Remove proposed
- Users consciously decide whether to adopt a platform.
- An icon signals the need for changes at an early stage.
This allows production errors to be avoided before they occur – a clear added value in projects with many variations.
Conclusion: Management by Color
The traffic light concept in factory365 translates complex ERP data into clear, actionable signals:
- Red This means taking action
- Yellow It means staying attentive
- Blue shows active progress
- Green provides production security
A production or project manager doesn't need to analyze a hundred lines – a glance at the execution monitoring is sufficient.
Through the manual function "Calculate availability indicator" Furthermore, control over update times is retained – an important aspect for performance and system stability with large amounts of data.
In short: factory365 enables real Management by Exception – visual, integrated and practical.
