From Weekly Spreadsheets to a Live Shop Floor Plan-vs-Actual Dashboard

At a glance

A manufacturer tracked production against forecast with a manually built weekly spreadsheet, so shop floor teams often didn't know where a product line stood until days after the fact. True Blue Technologies built a Tableau dashboard that refreshes automatically from the ERP every morning and displays actual-versus-forecast performance, by product, directly on the shop floor.

Challenges

• Lagging visibilityActual-versus-forecast performance lived in a spreadsheet that was manually assembled once a week, so the shop floor was often reacting to problems days after they started.
• No shared standard for “on track”Whether a product line was ahead of or behind plan came down to a supervisor's judgment call rather than a consistent threshold.
• Disconnected systemsActual production data lived in the ERP, forecasts lived in a separate submission process, and nothing brought the two together where the floor could see them.
• Conflicting numbers across shiftsDifferent shifts and plants worked from different versions of the report, leading to debates about whose numbers were right instead of what to do next.

Solution

True Blue built an automated Tableau dashboard that pulls actual invoiced units and dollars directly from the ERP and compares them against the submitted forecast:

• Actual units and dollars, month to date and year to date, compared directly against the submitted forecast
• Automatic color-coded status thresholds (red under 75% of forecast, yellow 75–99%, green at or above 100%) so a line's status is obvious without interpretation
• Product-level detail rolls up to plant and grand totals, with variance shown in both units and dollars so a small percentage gap on a large product doesn't get lost
• Refreshed every morning and displayed on shop floor screens, tied to the production calendar so everyone can see exactly how many production days have elapsed in the period

Benefits

1. Faster course correctionSupervisors see which product lines are behind plan first thing in the morning instead of at month end, so they can rebalance the day's schedule while there's still time to act.
2. One shared source of truthEvery shift and every plant looks at the same actual-versus-forecast numbers, removing the back-and-forth over whose report is correct.
3. Less manual reportingThe plant no longer waits on a manually assembled spreadsheet each week, freeing analyst time for the exceptions that actually need attention.
4. Built-in accountabilityObjective color-coded thresholds keep conversations focused on the plan and the path forward, not on who's numbers are right.