What Started

Set up your plant

Areas, import and export

Areas

An area is a line, cell or department, such as Press shop. Each machine is in one area or none.

  • The board groups machines by area, in the order of your list. Machines with no area come last.
  • The board, TV mode and Reports show All areas and one tab per area, so you can look at one area at a time. TV mode opens on the area you are looking at.
  • Reports also list OEE per area.

Set up areas

Owners and admins change areas under Settings → Areas. Other members can see the list.

  1. Open Settings → Areas.
  2. Under Add an area, type a Name and click Add area.
  3. Use the arrows to put the areas in the order you want on the board.

To rename an area, change its name in the list and click Save. Names are up to 80 characters, and two areas cannot share a name, whatever the capitals. A plant can have up to 100 areas.

Each area shows how many machines it has. Click the number to open the board for that area.

Click Delete to remove an area. Its machines stay, with no area.

Put a machine in an area

Pick the Area when you add the machine. For a machine you have, an admin opens it and changes Area under Machine, then clicks Save. To move many machines, import them with an area column.

Import machines

Add or update many machines at once from a spreadsheet saved as CSV. Owners and admins can import.

  1. Open Settings → Import and export.
  2. Click Download the template, or export your machines (below) to start from what you have.
  3. Fill in the file, one machine per line, and save it as CSV.
  4. Choose it under CSV file, or paste the rows under Or paste the rows.
  5. Click Check the file. Nothing is saved yet.
  6. Read the Preview. Each line says New, Update, No change or Problem, with what would change.
  7. If every line is right, click Import to save. The button says how many machines it will add or update.

Columns

The first line names the columns. Only name is needed. Headings ignore capitals, spaces and dashes.

Column What it holds
name The machine's name. A name you already have updates that machine; a new name adds one.
area Its area. Areas you don't have yet are added.
ideal_rate Parts per hour at full speed, for OEE. Needs a plan with machine counts.
target_rate The parts per hour you aim for, at or below the ideal rate.
shift_schedule The name of one of your shift schedules.

Files saved with semicolons, and numbers with a decimal comma, are read too.

How lines are matched

  • A machine is matched by name, ignoring capitals. Archived machines are not matched.
  • An empty cell, or a column left out, keeps the value the machine has. You cannot clear a value from the file; do that on the machine's page.
  • New machines with no shift_schedule start on the schedule set under New machines use in Settings → Shifts.

All or nothing

The import saves every line or none. Fix any line marked Problem and check the file again. Common problems:

  • The same name on two lines.
  • A rate that is not a number above 0, or a target rate above the ideal rate.
  • Rates on the Free plan, which has no machine counts. Leave the rate columns empty.
  • A shift schedule that does not exist yet. Add it under Settings → Shifts first.
  • More new machines than your plan allows.

A file can have up to 500 machines and be up to 200 KB.

Export machines

Any member can export. On Settings → Import and export, click export your machines (members who are not admins see export the machines). You get a CSV of your active machines in the same columns, ordered by area and then by name.

To change many machines at once, export, edit the file in a spreadsheet, and import it back. Cells that start like a formula get a leading apostrophe so a spreadsheet does not run them; the import removes it again.