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Shop floor & inventory

How to track every panel on the shop floor

Tracking every panel means each unique product has a status and a container location you can scan — not a whiteboard. Spectr uses barcode records from BOM through the shop so “where is A-237?” is a lookup, not a walk.

Key facts

  • If status lives in a supervisor’s head, it is already stale.
  • Spectr’s inventory model is container-level: location, contents, status.
  • Shop-floor dashboards show what is being worked, by whom, and progress.
  • The same product ID continues into crates and the field app.

How shops handle this

  1. Give every product a label at issue
    Unlabeled WIP is how panels vanish between the brake and the crate.
  2. Scan into containers
    Skids and carts are records, not furniture.
  3. Scan at process complete
    The dashboard cannot be live if completion is a shout.
  4. Stop the weekly “where is it” meeting
    If you still need it, a scan step is missing.

Common questions

Do we barcode every small flashing?

Barcode what you would send two people to find. Bulk the rest.

What if scanners fail?

Paper travelers are a fallback, not the system. Fix the device; do not create a second process.

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