Manufacturing Information Displays

Synopsis

• Business Challenge: Improve real-time visibility into active production jobs, quality events, scrap activity, and machine downtime across the manufacturing environment.
• Solution: Full-screen Power App displayed on 75-inch monitors, combining live job information from FPA, NCP, and Scrap Accounting with machine-state signals captured through Raspberry Pi and Python.
• Business Impact: Increased plant-wide operational awareness and enabled faster response to machine downtime, quality events, and changing production conditions.
• My Contribution: Designed and developed the Power App, application architecture, data integrations, and automation that powered the manufacturing information displays, while collaborating with another contributor whose Raspberry Pi and Python-based Andon system provided machine-state and downtime monitoring.

Business Challenge

Production information existed across several operational systems, but employees lacked a single, highly visible source for understanding what was happening with active manufacturing jobs in real time.

Important information such as First Part Approval status, nonconforming events, scrap activity, and machine downtime could require users to access separate systems or rely on manual communication. This limited shared awareness across the manufacturing floor and could delay response when production conditions changed.

The plant needed a highly visible information system that could continuously present current job status while also alerting employees immediately when production equipment went down.

Solution

I designed and developed a manufacturing information display system centered around a full-screen Power App presented on 75-inch displays mounted throughout the production environment.

When a First Part Approval was generated, the system created a corresponding production line item on the displays using information captured through the FPA process. As the job progressed, the same line item was updated with additional operational information from related systems, including Nonconforming Part & Process reports and Production Scrap Accounting entries.

The solution also incorporated live machine-state monitoring. Raspberry Pi devices were wired directly into signals from production equipment, while Python processed those signals and translated machine states into data used by the display system. When a machine went down, the displays automatically surfaced a visible alert identifying the affected equipment.

Together, these components created a lightweight digital Andon system that combined production, quality, scrap, and equipment-status information into a shared real-time view.

Business Impact

The displays created a shared source of operational awareness that was visible throughout the manufacturing environment.

Production, Quality, Maintenance, and leadership could see current job information, quality events, scrap activity, and machine downtime without needing to navigate multiple systems. Machine-down alerts increased awareness of equipment problems as they occurred and supported faster response by the appropriate teams.

By combining operational application data with live equipment signals, the solution improved situational awareness across the plant and provided a more immediate, coordinated view of manufacturing conditions.

My Contribution

I designed and developed the full-screen Power App that served as the primary manufacturing information display and built the application-level integrations that brought production, quality, and scrap information into a unified real-time view.

I designed the display experience around active production jobs, using information generated through systems including First Part Approval, Nonconforming Part & Process Reporting, and Production Scrap Accounting to continuously update job status as production progressed.

The broader display system also incorporated a Raspberry Pi and Python-based Andon capability developed by another contributor. I worked within the overall solution to present those machine-state alerts alongside the operational information displayed through the Power App.