Sign production tracking: where every work order is, who has it and for how long

Orders follow your shop's flow

A sign job passes through many hands between order entry and packing. A new account starts with a ready-made flow: order entry, design, manager approval, production chief, production (with CNC, paint, fabrication and electrics/LED departments) and packing, plus purchasing and field installation stages. In the workflow editor you add and remove stages, rename them and change how they connect to match your shop.

An order moves from one stage to another only along a transition defined in the flow, and only the team bound to that stage, or someone allowed to manage all orders, can make the move. A job cannot skip a step and land in packing by accident.

Department tasks run in parallel

If a department has to be added or removed while the work runs, “Edit the sub-flow” does it; a finished task stays as it is.

1. 1

   The production chief starts the job

   When the order goes to production, the chief picks the departments that will work on it: CNC, paint and electrics for channel letters, say. One is marked responsible; each department gets its own task and its team is notified.

2. 2

   Each team closes its own task

   The CNC operator sees only their own queue and closes their task when it is done. One department finishing does not close the order; the others carry on.

3. 3

   The responsible department finishes last

   The responsible department cannot close its task until every other task is done, and it needs a photo or file of the finished work added during production. When the last task closes, the order moves to packing by itself.

The production board and work lists

On the order board every stage is a column and cards are sorted by the nearest due date. When you drag a card, only the stages that order may go to light up; a job heading to design or to the departments opens the order so you can pick the designer or departments.

The lists have ready views such as production, jobs to start, overdue and due this week. Filters, sorting and column choices live in the address bar, so you can send a colleague the exact list as a link or export it to Excel. Several orders can be moved at once, and each one goes through the same rules.

Everyone sees their own work

This is enforced on the server, not by hiding things on screen: lists, dashboard counts, search and exports all apply the same limit. An order someone may not see cannot be inferred from a number either.

• A member sees the orders at the stages their role is bound to, and the tasks opened for their department.
• A designer sees the design jobs assigned to them.
• Managers can be allowed to see every production, repair or design order.
• With view-only grants, a station can see the work heading its way without being able to act on it.
• A subcontractor sees only orders with a task for their own stage.

Stage history, target times and sub-statuses

When an order entered and left each stage is recorded, along with who moved it. You can give each stage and each department a target time in hours. The order's flow view lists every stop with its duration: within the target it shows what is left, past it how late it is. Times are calendar hours, not working hours.

For finer detail inside a stage there are sub-statuses, such as “At the chrome shop” in production or “Revision” in design. You define the options and colours per stage; because they are not free text, the list can be filtered by them.

On the home page each member sees their own day: work at their stage, designs waiting for approval, today's installations, overdue orders and orders past their target time.

Due dates and notifications

A due date is a calendar day. An order becomes overdue once its due day has ended, so a job due today never looks late today. Once a job reaches packing its due date stops counting, and it also stands still while the customer is deciding on an approval.