Digitising the shop floor without stopping production

In a stone processing plant there is no window to switch systems. The saws do not stop because recording has moved from paper to tablet, and orders in progress have to ship on time. Digital recording has to come in while the line is running.

The products we are talking about are those of the Stonify ecosystem: OnScan to digitise the material, OnShopfloor for shop floor recording, OnManage for orders and costs and OnDash for inventory. They were developed at Sevways and now belong to Stonify, a company we founded.

Start with the material's journey

Before installing any equipment, it is worth following a slab from receiving to the closed crate and noting, at each step, who handles the material, what information it produces and where that information sits today: on a sheet, on a board, in the shift supervisor's memory. That map shows where digital recording gains most and where it will meet resistance.

In OnShopfloor, the recording points are the ones the operation already recognises:

• receiving blocks and slabs;
• sawing;
• reserving slabs for an order;
• closing crates for shipping.

It is best not to invent new steps. If the operator already signs a sheet when closing a crate, the digital record replaces that signature and does not add another.

Equipment that adapts to the line

OnScan Horizontal and OnScan Vertical are installed on existing processing lines. The line is not redesigned around the capture equipment. For showroom and catalogue there is OnScan PhotoStone, and for blocks and offcuts off the line, OnScan Mobile, which digitises with a mobile phone in 2D and 3D.

Installation on the line is the part that may require a stoppage, so it should be planned like a maintenance intervention: at a time when the line would already be stopped, with the work prepared and tested in advance.

An app built for the shop floor

OnShopfloor is an Android app in operators' hands. Screens with few fields, code scanning instead of typing, buttons that can be pressed with gloves on. A record that takes longer than the paper sheet ends up being made at the end of the shift, from memory, and loses its value.

Run in parallel, briefly

During go-live, digital recording and paper coexist. The period has to be short and have an end date: while there are two records, people choose the more convenient one and neither is complete. We recommend starting with one point in the journey, for example receiving, and only moving to the next when the first no longer needs paper.

Connect to the ERP from day one

Recording only repays the operators' effort if it feeds something. Each scan in OnShopfloor updates inventory, costs and order progress, without manual entry in the ERP. When the salesperson sees the slab reserved for their customer minutes after the operator marks it, they stop phoning the plant to ask, and the plant understands why the recording exists.

At Mármores Galrão, fifty staff record production on the shop floor with OnShopfloor and OnManage.