Shop floor data collection for small manufacturers.

On a lot of shop floors, the record of what happened is still paper. Travelers, clipboards, count sheets, and notes about why a machine was down all get carried to the office and typed in at the end of the shift, if they get typed in at all. Norsoft builds shop floor data collection that captures that information where the work happens, from Mankato, Minnesota.

Why paper on the floor costs more than it looks

The obvious cost is the retyping. Someone in the office spends hours a week turning handwriting into numbers. The bigger cost is the delay. Management sees yesterday's production tomorrow, scrap shows up after the material is already gone, and downtime gets recorded as whatever someone remembered at four o'clock.

Paper also loses detail exactly where it matters. The reason a machine stopped, the lot a part came from, the operator who noticed the problem. That is the information you need when a customer calls about a bad batch, and it is the first thing that does not make it off the clipboard.

Buy first, if it fits

There are off-the-shelf shop floor data collection and digital work instruction products, and for a standard operation they can be a good fit. If one matches how your floor works, use it. Where shops tend to outgrow them is the data that is specific to their process, and the connection back to the systems the office already runs. A tablet app that captures counts but cannot hand them to your ERP has just moved the retyping somewhere else.

What we build

Simple screens at the machine or on a tablet that ask for exactly what your process needs: counts, scrap and its reason, downtime and its cause, lot and material, and operator, with big buttons for gloved hands. It keeps working when the network drops and catches up when it comes back. And it feeds straight into the systems the office already uses, so production, inventory, and the schedule update as the work happens instead of the next morning.

You own the code and the data. Your production history stays yours.

Real examples

A plastic extrusion manufacturer. We implemented real-time data capture across three production lines as part of a custom ERP and scheduling platform, so production, inventory and sales stayed aligned. Downtime and labor bottlenecks dropped by more than 30%. Read the case study.

A field inspection platform. Crews that used to fill out paper forms now complete reports on a phone and submit them from the job site with photos attached. Reporting time was cut in half. The same approach works on a plant floor.

How we start

We collect a week of the paper, every traveler, count sheet, and note, because it tells us what the floor actually records, what the office actually uses, and what gets lost between the two, and it is a far better spec than anything we could write in a meeting.

This is probably you if

• Counts, scrap or downtime get written on paper and typed in later
• You see yesterday's production numbers tomorrow
• When a customer reports a bad batch, tracing it takes hours
• Someone in the office spends a large part of their week retyping

More on the other problems we solve for plants is on our manufacturing page.