Production

Can I use it?

Where to find it

Menu ▸ Production

If you work in more than one company, pick the company first. Every page in this module now sits under its company - so if you work in two companies you will see the Production menu list each company, with the same pages under each one.

Some companies get their production information from a factory system and some do not yet. If you open a page for a company whose production is not yet connected, the page will say so and tell you to contact an administrator. That is not a fault - it means nothing has been set up for that company yet.

The pages

Machines, not tags

An order is issued to a machine - "Line 1", "Press 2" - and the machine list on Issue Order is grouped by work centre (a line of several machines that is planned together). Under the machine name you see its output tag: the one instrument whose values count as that machine's production. You never pick a tag; it follows from the machine. Machines and work centres are set up by an administrator under Administration → Machines & Work Centres.

On an open order, the order page shows Machine conditions during this order: every sensor on that machine over the order's actual run window, with min / average / max / last and a trend, plus the machine's output total. For an older order the numbers saved when the step was stopped are shown instead. You can also ask the AI Assistant "what was the bearing temperature during order 12345".

Everyday jobs

Find out what is running right now

Open the AI Assistant and ask "what is currently running on Line 3?". It combines the live machine reading with the order book, so it can tell you both that the line is running and what is on it. You need a Production role in that company, and an Instrument Graphs role for the machine half. If you only have one of the two, you get the half you are allowed to see plus a note.

Capture a scoresheet

1. Open Menu ▸ Production ▸ Scoresheets.
2. Find the order or machine you are capturing for.
3. Fill in the grid. These are dense capture grids designed for speed - tab moves you along.
4. Save before you leave the page.

Needs the Production Editor role.

Fill in and hand over an IP shift report

1. Open Menu ▸ Production ▸ IP Shift Handover, choose the date and the shift, and press Start / open report. If that shift already has a report, that one opens - there is only ever one report per shift.
2. Fill it in as the shift goes. The screen looks like the paper form and saves itself a couple of seconds after you stop typing; the top right corner shows Saved and the time.
3. Under 5.1 and 5.2, click Production Order and pick from the IP production orders (numbers starting F2) that are Planned, Started, Stopped or on Breakdown. Type part of the order number, item or description to narrow the list; the refresh button next to 5. Output reloads it. The bag description fills in by itself, and the sales order list then shows every live sales order for that item - Free, Approved, Modified, In Process or Released - with its customer and status. Closed, cancelled and blocked orders are left out. Pick the one this output is for, or No sales order (stock).
4. Under 2. Thread Issues, record the sewing thread. In 2.1 Received put the thread type that came from the store, the total spools, the spool batch numbers and the name of the person who signed for it. In 2.2 Used do the same for the thread that went onto the bags, and pick the Production Order it was used on - the orders already on this report's 5.1 Total Bags Tubed are offered first. The order is optional: leave it blank and the spools still print and still count for the shift, but they cannot be shown against an order's bags in the KPIs. One order can appear on more than one line, which is what you want when two thread types went onto the same order. Press Add thread received or Add thread used for more lines.
5. Need more lines than the paper has? Press Add line. The printout simply runs onto a second page.
6. At the end of the shift, press Hand over.
7. Under 7. Waste, waste is recorded per production order. Pick the order first in 7.1 Production Order - the other boxes stay locked until you do - then fill in 7.2 reject tubes, 7.3 offcuts (kg), 7.4 snap band rejects and 7.5 comments. Had rejects on more than one order? Press Add production order for another record. Each order can be listed once, and figures without an order cannot be saved.
8. Under 8. Breakdowns, pick the Production Order the machine was running. Leave it blank and the breakdown stays on the form only.
9. The incoming supervisor opens the report, corrects anything that is wrong, types their name next to Accepted By and presses Accept. The report is then locked, and the figures are sent to the production orders - see below. Every change the incoming supervisor made is listed under History.
10. Press PDF for a printable copy. It carries the document number, the revision and the report reference (for example SHR-2026-0001).

Needs the Production Supervisor role (Production Editor, Planner and Admin can do it too). Any supervisor in the company can open and change a report - it is not tied to whoever started it - and that includes correcting one that has already been handed over. What the supervisor who handed it over cannot do is accept it themselves; they can press Recall to take it back instead. That way the acceptance always means a second person has read it. (An administrator can switch that rule off for a company in the settings.) Only a Production Admin can Reopen an accepted report or Void a draft, and has to give a reason.

The boxes you fill in are shaded. Once a report is accepted - or while someone else has it - the shading disappears, so if a box is not shaded it is not yours to type in.

What happens to the numbers when a shift report is accepted

Accepting is what sends the shift's figures to the production orders. Until then everything stays on the form. Once you accept, the numbers are added to the orders and the report is locked - so check them before you press it.

• 5.2 Total Bags Cuffed is added to the order's good quantity, each line going to the order chosen on that line. 5.1 Total Bags Tubed is not sent anywhere - cuffing is the last process, and sending both would count the same bag twice.
• Each 7. Waste record's 7.2 No. of Fabric Reject Tubes is added to its own order's reject quantity, and that record's 7.5 Reject Comments goes across with it. Offcuts and snap band rejects stay on the report and in the KPIs.
• 2. Thread Issues is not sent anywhere. Spools are recorded on the form, printed on the PDF and added up in the KPIs, but nothing is posted to a production order or to stock.
• 8. Breakdowns are written against the order chosen on each breakdown line as breakdown records, with the start and finish times you typed. A breakdown with no order stays on the form only: it still counts in the report and the KPIs, but nothing reaches a production order.

The quantities are added to whatever the order already has, and the order is not stopped - handing a shift over does not finish an order, so its status and its finish times are left exactly as they were. The figures go to the order's last step, because cuffing is the last process.

Some things are skipped rather than posted, and the report says which under History:

• A closed production order is refused and nothing is added to it. The report is still accepted - only the posting is skipped.
• A line with no production order chosen is skipped.
• An order that is not an IP order (its number does not start with F2) is skipped.

If a Production Admin reopens an accepted report and it is accepted again, nothing is posted twice. Each posting is recorded against the report, and that record is what prevents it happening again.

10. Hand Over Notes can be found through the AI Assistant by people with Production access to that company. Absentee reasons, injury details and thread issues - including the sign-off names - are deliberately not searchable.

If the same report is open on two devices, the second save is refused with "changed on another device". Press Reload the latest version rather than typing over the other person's work. If the connection drops, your changes stay on the screen and are saved when it comes back.

IP Shift Handover KPIs adds up accepted reports only, unless you switch on "Include reports not yet accepted". The Thread tab shows spools received and used per shift, and - for every order a 2.2 line named - the thread type, the spools, the bags tubed and the bags per spool. Export to Excel gives one sheet per table.

The form title, document number, revision, shift names, tubing machines and the number of blank lines are set by a Production Admin under Administration ▸ Configuration ▸ IP Shift Handover ▸ IP Shift Handover Settings. Changing them does not change reports that have already been started.

Fill in an injection score sheet

One sheet covers one machine for one shift, the same way the paper does. A three-shift day on six machines is eighteen sheets, and each machine's team leader keeps their own.

1. Open Menu ▸ Production ▸ Injection Score Sheets. Choose the date, the shift and the machine, and press Start / open sheet. If that machine and shift already has a sheet, that one opens - there is only ever one.
2. If the machine runs more than one product, pick the Product as well. Each product has its own cycle time and its own targets, and the line under the boxes tells you which you are about to use.
3. Fill in the Shift team - team leader, foreman, 5S leader, and whichever other positions this machine's sheet asks for. Start typing and names used on recent sheets are offered.
4. As each hour ends, type the pairs made. The hour's target is printed next to the box and the Var column shows at a glance how far ahead or behind you are - red is behind. Some hours show a range, such as 54-60: those are the short hours (start-up, the shift-change hour and run-down), and the lower figure is what the shift is measured against.
5. Lost time goes on the hour it happened. Press the Downtime button on that hour's row, then Add downtime. Choose Electrical, Mechanical or Other, type the reason and the minutes. Reasons used before are offered as you type. An hour can carry more than one entry.
6. For Empty stations, enter how many stations were empty and for how long instead of a reason. The sheet then works out how many pairs that cost from the machine's own figure - the sum the paper form leaves to whoever reads it.
7. Fill in the cup test and the RGE1 and RGE2 polyol and ISO ratios, and the PU waste and re-injection totals.
8. Answer every end-of-shift check. Tick it, or untick it and say what is wrong. A sheet cannot be submitted with a check left unanswered.
9. Add any absentees and anything the next shift needs to know under Comments.
10. At the end of the shift press Submit. Then a Production Planner or Admin presses Sign off, and the sheet locks.
11. Press Print for a PDF of the sheet, carrying the document number, the revision and the sheet reference (for example INJ-2026-0001).

The sheet saves itself a couple of seconds after you stop typing - the line under the heading shows Saved and the time. If the connection drops your work stays on the screen and goes up when it comes back. If the same sheet is open on two devices the second save is refused with "changed on another device"; press Reload the sheet rather than typing over the other person's work.

Filling a sheet in needs the Production Supervisor role (Editor, Planner and Admin can do it too). A submitted sheet can still be corrected by any of them - a mistake should not have to wait for the right person to be on shift - and whoever submitted it, or an administrator, can Recall it. What they cannot do is sign off their own sheet, so the signature always means a second person has read it. (An administrator can switch that rule off for a company.) Only a Production Admin can Reopen a signed-off sheet or Void one, and must give a reason, which is kept under History.

Targets are set up once per machine, not typed on the sheet. A Production Admin keeps them under Administration ▸ Configuration ▸ Injection Score Sheets ▸ Injection Score Sheet Settings: the cycle time, the 8 hour and 12 hour targets, the target for each hour of the shift, how many pairs an empty station costs per minute, the allocated and break minutes, and the positions the sheet names. Give a machine a second profile when it runs a second product at a different rate - that is a profile, not another machine. A machine with no profile cannot be scored, and the list page says so. Changing a target later does not change sheets that have already been started: each sheet keeps the target it was actually run to.

The same page holds the form title, the document number, the revision, the shift names, the end-of-shift checks and the number of blank absentee lines.

Issue or close an order

Menu ▸ Production ▸ Planning ▸ Issue Order (or Close Order). Planner or Admin only.

Choose your site

Most production pages now have a Site box at the top (for example Plant 1, Plant 2). Pick your site and the page shows only that site's orders; pick All sites to see the whole company. The page remembers your choice on this device, so you only set it once. A site that does project work only (no machines) appears on the sales pages but not on the planning pages.

The planner leaves room on purpose

Recalculate Plan fills each shift to 80 % of its working time and no more. The chip at the top of the page says so ("Planning at 80 % of shift time") and the Load column shows the share used for each order. The other 20 % is the buffer for breakdowns, missing stock and rush jobs — a plan that fills 100 % is a plan that is late by lunchtime. A Production Admin can change the share for the whole company, one site, one work centre or one machine under Administration ▸ Configuration ▸ Planning Capacity; the most specific setting wins. Setting it to 100 gives exactly the old plan.

The line is kept per shift, for all the orders in it together: once a machine's shift has been filled to its line, the next order moves on to the next shift. After a preview the page also shows how many orders finish late (after the due date the ERP gave them) and by how many hours, and the table has a Due, a Late (h) and a Why column — hover over the question mark to read, in plain words, why that order landed where it did. Late orders are tinted red.

Two switches you may meet. Earliest due date first when priorities tie (on by default): when two orders have the same priority, the one that is due first is planned first; switch it off to order them by order number, as before. And frozen hours, set with the planning capacity: an order that was already planned to start within that many hours is left exactly where it is, so tomorrow morning's work does not move every time somebody recalculates. It is off (0) unless an Admin sets it.

Material at risk

When the company's on-hand stock figures are loaded, Recalculate Plan also checks each planned order's materials against the projected stock balance on the day the order is planned to start. An order whose material is not projected to be there shows a red stock icon in the Why column - hover it for the material, the quantity needed, the quantity projected and the first day a planned receipt covers it. The same orders are listed under Plan risks on the Production Plan board. It is a flag only: the plan is never moved because of material. If no on-hand figures are loaded, the notes under the plan say that material was not checked.

Issue Order works the time out for you

When you issue an order the routing from the ERP is shown with its work centre, set-up minutes and rate per hour. Under the Duration box the page says "Worked out: N min" and, underneath, where the figure came from — for example "2 000 at 120 per hour from item configuration IC-1234 rev 2 × 0.93 measured on this machine (8 runs) = 1 076 min, plus 45 min set-up and clean-down". Press Use to take it (it fills in set-up and clean-down too), or type your own. The order remembers which one you chose.

The page looks in this order: a published item configuration for the item; if there is none, the ERP routing; if that has no rate, what this machine actually achieved on this item in its last runs; and if nothing is known, it says so and you type the minutes. When the item has a published configuration, its machine for the step is pre-selected too — you can still change it.

Set up how an item is made (Item Configuration)

Production ▸ Item Configuration lists one row per item and revision. A Planner or Production Admin can:

• Draft from ERP — pick an item the ERP has made before. Its steps, rates and set-up times are copied from the routing of its most recent order, and its raw materials from the planned materials of an order, worked back to a quantity per unit. Nothing is typed twice.
• New — start empty, for an item the ERP knows nothing about.

In the editor each step has a machine, a rate per hour, set-up and clean-down minutes, a scrap percentage, the other machines it may also run on, its settings (nominal, minimum, maximum) and its raw materials per one unit of output. Compare with measured shows, beside your figures, what the machine really achieved and how much material was really used on closed orders — press use to take a measured figure.

A configuration starts as a Draft. Publish it and Issue Order starts using it — and from that moment it is frozen. To change a published configuration press New revision: you get revision 2 as a draft, and publishing it retires revision 1. An order always keeps the revision it was issued with; you can see it on the order under Output and waste.

Op specs: how each product is made

Some companies keep an op spec (operating specification) per product: the materials, the machine settings of each step and the lab tests, on paper forms or spreadsheets. When an administrator switches on Op spec forms for the company, ThreadWare adds a Production ▸ Op Specs menu: the op specs can be imported from the spreadsheets, checked and signed off sheet by sheet, printed like the paper, chosen when an order is issued, and compared with the machines while the order runs. The lab records its results against them, and those results become the certificates sent to customers with a delivery. Companies without the switch see the plain Item Configuration described above.

All of it is explained, step by step, in its own guide: Op Specs - including how to delete an import and load the files again and certificates for customers.

See how full the shifts are, and what is at risk

The top of Production ▸ Production Plan now shows a coloured strip per machine, one cell per shift. The number is the percentage of the whole shift that is planned. Green is under 70 %, amber is up to the planning line, and red is over the line — which only a date typed by hand can cause. The part above the line is the buffer; it is not idle time. A ⚠ on a cell means the breakdowns recorded in that shift were longer than its buffer, so the orders behind it are running late against the plan. Under the strip, Plan risks lists the orders planned to finish after their due date.

The strip reads the last plan that was saved. If it says no plan has been calculated yet, run Recalculate Plan and press Save Plan once. Plan runs at the bottom keeps every saved plan — click one to see each order's old and new dates and the reasons.

Proposals: the advisor suggests, a planner decides

A Planner or Production Admin can press Ask the advisor on the plan board (or ask the AI assistant to "propose a plan"). The advisor tries priority changes — and, where an item configuration allows it, another machine — on a copy of the plan, keeps what cuts lateness most, and lists the result as a proposal: late orders and lateness hours before and after, and each change with its reason. See the proposed plan shows every order as it would be.

Nothing changes until you press Apply. Apply makes the listed changes, recalculates and saves the plan — the same as Recalculate Plan followed by Save Plan — and records who applied it and why. Reject discards it. A proposal nobody has decided on expires after a week, because the plan it was made for has moved on. The advisor never touches the 80 % line.

Material used against standard (Usage Variance)

Production ▸ Usage Variance compares, for every order and raw material, what should have been used with what was used:

• Standard — from the item configuration the order was issued with (quantity per unit × what was made, plus scrap). If the order had none, the ERP's planned quantity is used instead, scaled to what was actually made. The Basis column says which.
• Used — issued minus returned.
• Variance — used minus standard. Below zero (green) is better than standard.
• Waste explains — waste recorded against that material on the order.
• Unexplained — what is left. The list starts with the biggest.

The figures are worked out overnight and again when an order is closed; on an order itself (Output and waste) a Supervisor, Planner or Admin can press Recalculate to see them now. The three tiles at the top — usage variance %, yield % and waste per 1 000 units — are there to be read: if one of them is a KPI of yours, you still enter it on the KPI yourself.

See what an item costs (Item Costing)

Production ▸ Item Costing puts everything about one item's cost on one page. It only reads: nothing you do here changes the item, the order or the figures in the factory system.

Find the item. Type part of its code or its description in the Item box and pick it from the list. Raw materials can be found too. The page's address includes the item, so you can bookmark it or send it to a colleague who has the same access.

What each part shows:

• Item - code, descriptions, item group, item type and the unit it is stocked in.
• Gross profit - the latest sale of the item and the gross profit on it, worked out twice (see below).
• Cost price by costing unit - the factory system keeps one cost price per costing unit, and a costing unit is usually one factory. Each row shows the material cost, the operations cost and the total cost price, the currency and the date the price was last worked out.
• Raw materials - every material on the item's bill of material, per one unit of the item: the quantity, the scrap allowance, the quantity with scrap, the material's own cost price, what that comes to, and how much of it is in stock (on hand, allocated, blocked and available). Press the arrow beside a material to see its stock per warehouse. Click a material's code to open its own costing. A material marked made is itself made from other materials. The last line adds the materials up and sets the total against the factory system's own material cost: the difference should be close to zero.
• Routing - op spec - the steps, machines and rates in the item's published op spec, when it has one.
• Routing - latest production order - the operations of the item's most recent order, as the factory system planned them.
• Current production orders - orders for the item that are not closed. Orders the factory system has but that have not been issued in ThreadWare yet are marked Not yet issued.
• Purchase data and Conversion factors - the item's purchase price, and how its other units convert to the unit it is stocked in.

Why there can be several cost prices, and which one is used. An item made or bought in more than one factory has a cost price for each. One of them is marked as the one used for the raw materials and the gross profit, and the sentence under the selector says why: the factory of the order you came from, the item's own factory, or the only (or first) one with a price. Choose another in Price the raw materials in to see the page in that factory's prices. Which costing unit belongs to which factory is set by an administrator.

How gross profit is worked out. The selling price is the latest sales order line for the item, after any discount, per stock unit; cancelled lines, returns and lines with no amount are left out. An order in another currency is converted at the rate on that order. Gross profit = (selling price - cost) ÷ selling price. It is shown twice: once against the material cost only, and once against the full cost price (material and operations). A loss shows as a negative percentage in red. When it cannot be worked out, the page says why instead of showing a number:

• no sales order line was found for the item;
• the latest sales line has no amount;
• there is no cost price for the costing unit shown (a cost of zero counts as none - it would otherwise read as 100 % profit);
• the item was sold in a unit that cannot be converted to its stock unit;
• the order is in another currency and carries no exchange rate;
• the costing information is being reloaded (see below).

"Being reloaded". The factory system's costing information is copied to ThreadWare by a job that empties each table and fills it again. If you open the page while that is happening, it says the table is being reloaded rather than showing a cost of nothing. Wait a few minutes and open the page again.

From an order. On a production order, View Costing opens this page for the order's item, priced in the order's factory where that is known. Back to order at the top takes you back to the same order. Both buttons need Cost Accountant or Production Admin; Back to order also needs a role that opens the production orders page (Production Viewer or above).

Record what came off the machine, and what was wasted

Open the order and expand Output and waste near the bottom. Each line is one recording — a shift, a stop, a handover section — never a running total, so you can see who recorded what and when. Add a line with the good, rework and reject quantities (and a reject reason), or a waste line with a waste type and quantity. A Supervisor, Planner or Admin presses Verify to sign a line off; a verified line is locked. Waste types and reject reasons are set up per company under Administration ▸ Configuration ▸ Waste Types.

Stopping an order and accepting an IP shift report both write these lines for you, so the history is complete without extra typing. The totals on the order itself are unchanged — the ERP still reads them exactly as before.

Record a breakdown

Open the order and record the breakdown with a reason from the list. The reason list is maintained by an administrator under Administration ▸ Configuration ▸ Breakdown Reasons. Choosing the right reason is what makes the downtime analysis worth anything, so use the closest one rather than a catch-all.

Why some companies have fewer pages

Companies do not all keep production data in the same system. ThreadWare shows only the pages that can display a given company's data, so the menu will differ between companies. Job Cards in particular only appear for companies set up to use them.

If you see "No Sales Orders Available for this Company. Please contact an Administrator"-style message, that company has no order book connected yet.

When something looks wrong

Related guides

• Sales - where the order came from.
• Instrument charts - what the machines are actually doing.
• Quality (QMS) - the procedures behind the work.
• All guides