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Factorial 101
Table of Contents
This page is for anyone new to Factorial, or new to tracking manufacturing work in software at all. It explains the handful of ideas the rest of the documentation builds on, maps them to the names other tools use, shows where each one lives in the app, and walks through a few days on a factory floor.
The Big Picture
Every factory has to answer four questions:
- What do we build? The products and the components they are made from.
- How do we build it? The instructions people follow, in order, with the checks they perform along the way.
- What is being built right now? Which units are in progress, who is working on them, and what is waiting.
- What happened? Which parts went into which unit, who did the work, when, and what was measured.
Many shops answer these with paper travelers, spreadsheets, and memory. A traveler is a printed packet of instructions that moves with the unit, collecting signatures and handwritten measurements. It works until someone needs to find every unit that used a bad batch of screws, or change an instruction on twenty units already in progress.
Factorial is a manufacturing execution system (MES). It keeps the answers to all four questions in one live record:
- Parts say what is built.
- Procedures say how it is built.
- Work orders are the building, happening now.
- Inventory and history record what was built and how.
The Core Concepts
The examples below follow a small company that builds electric bikes.
Parts
A part is anything the factory buys, builds, or uses: a screw, a battery pack, a finished bike. Each part has a part number and a revision. The revision changes when the design changes, so BATT-100 rev B and BATT-100 rev C are different designs of the same part.
EBOMs
An EBOM, or engineering bill of materials, is the list of parts and quantities that make up a part, as designed by engineering. The bike's EBOM lists a frame, two wheels, a motor, and a battery pack. The battery pack has its own EBOM of cells, a wiring harness, and an enclosure. EBOMs usually come from CAD or PLM software and describe what the product is, not how to build it.
Procedures
A procedure is a reusable set of instructions for building, testing, or maintaining a part. "Build battery pack" is a procedure. So is "Leak test motor housing" and "Calibrate torque driver."
A procedure is made of steps. A step is one unit of work with one clear owner, such as "Weld cell tabs" or "Install harness." Steps can contain written instructions, drawings, 3D models, data to record, and the parts the step uses. Dependencies say which steps must finish before others can start.
Procedures are versioned. Each change produces a new procedure revision, which starts in Draft, moves to In review, and is released once enough reviewers approve it. Only released revisions can be used to build anything. See review and approval.
Part Requirements and MBOMs
A part requirement says which part a step needs, how many, and what happens to it: installed into the unit, or consumed like glue or solder. All the part requirements in a build procedure add up to its MBOM, or manufacturing bill of materials. The MBOM is the EBOM as manufacturing actually builds it. Factorial compares the two and shows where they disagree.
Work Orders and Tasks
A work order is one run of a released procedure revision: "Build battery pack, serial BP-0042." Creating a work order is often called cutting one. A work order copies its steps from the revision it was cut from, so later changes to the procedure never silently change work already underway.
Each step becomes a task on the work order. Operators open a task, follow its instructions, scan or select the parts they install, record the data the step asks for, and mark it completed. Factorial will not let a blocked task start, or let a task with a missing required value be completed.
A procedure can embed another procedure, such as a bike build that embeds the battery pack build. The bike's work order then contains a nested work order for the battery pack.
Queues
A queue is a prioritized list of tasks, often one per workstation or team. When a task becomes ready, Factorial places it in a matching queue. Operators work from their queue instead of hunting for what to do next, and leads reorder it to set priority.
Projects
A project is one-off work that does not need a released procedure, such as a prototype, an experiment, or a repair. Its tasks are edited and executed on the same page, so the plan can change as the work does. Projects still record parts used and data collected, so early builds are traceable too. Once a process is repeatable, it belongs in a procedure.
Inventory
Inventory is the digital record of physical things in the factory. Each record is an inventory line. A serialized part, like a battery pack, has one line per unit with its own serial number. A lot-tracked part, like a reel of screws from one supplier batch, shares one lot number across many pieces. Inventory is created, installed into other inventory, consumed, split, merged, and scrapped, and every one of those actions is recorded.
Issues
An issue records a problem. An NCR, or nonconformance report, says that product or work does not meet a requirement, such as a weld that failed inspection. An observation records anything else worth tracking, such as an unclear instruction. See issue kinds.
Redlines
A redline is a reviewed change to one task on one work order. The name comes from marking up a paper traveler in red pen. When an instruction turns out to be wrong mid-build, a redline fixes it on that work order without changing the procedure. Opening a redline places a hold on the task until the change is approved and applied.
History
History is the record of everything that happened: who changed a procedure, which lot went into which unit, who completed a task and what they measured. It is what lets a team answer "which bikes have cells from this batch?" in seconds instead of days.
Same Thing, Different Names
Every manufacturing tool names these ideas differently. If you have used another system, this table translates.
| Factorial | Also called | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Part | Item, material, component, SKU | Something bought, built, or used |
| EBOM | BOM, engineering BOM | What a part is made of, as designed |
| MBOM | Manufacturing BOM, build BOM | What a part is made of, as built |
| Procedure | Work instruction, routing, router, process plan, traveler template | Reusable instructions for a part |
| Procedure revision release | ECO or ECN approval, document release | Approving a change to the instructions |
| Step | Operation, op, work instruction step | One unit of work in a procedure |
| Work order | Job, traveler, shop order, production order, manufacturing order (MO) | One run of a procedure |
| Task | Operation, op, job step | One step being performed on a work order |
| Queue | Work center, workstation, dispatch list | Where ready work waits for a person |
| Project | Engineering build, prototype job, R&D order | One-off work without released instructions |
| Inventory line | Unit, serial, lot, stock, material lot | A tracked physical thing |
| Issue (NCR) | Nonconformance, discrepancy report, MRB item, defect | A problem with product or work |
| Redline | Deviation, red-lined traveler, waiver | A one-time change to in-flight work |
| History | Genealogy, as-built record, device history record (DHR), audit trail | What happened, and to what |
Where to Find Things
The navigation sidebar on the left groups every page. Press [ to open or close it, or Cmd+K (Ctrl+K on Windows and Linux) to jump to any page by name. Press ? to see every keyboard shortcut.
| Sidebar group | Pages | Go here to |
|---|---|---|
| Workspace | Favorites, My Views, Review Center, Notifications, Personalization | Find your starred records and saved views, and the reviews waiting on you |
| Pages | All pages | Open custom screens your organization built, such as station screens and dashboards |
| Work | Tasks, Queues, Work Orders, Procedures, Projects, Issues | Do, plan, and define the work |
| Materials | Parts, Inventory, Units of Measure | Look up parts, EBOMs, and physical stock |
| Factory | Locations | Browse factories, storage, and workstations |
| Data | Events, Analytics | Search history and run SQL queries over your data |
| Organization | Users, Roles, Tags, Fields, Shared Views, Settings | Administer people, permissions, and configuration |
| API | Plugins, API Docs, Keys | Extend and integrate Factorial |
A few starting points by role:
- Operators start in Queues or Tasks.
- Production leads start in Work Orders, Queues, and Projects.
- Manufacturing engineers start in Procedures, Parts, and the Review Center.
- Quality starts in Issues and Inventory.
To report something confusing or broken, select Have feedback? in the bottom right corner of any page.
Stories From the Floor
These stories follow the same electric bike company. Each one ends with the pages it touched.
A New Product's First Build
Engineering finishes the design of a new battery pack and loads its EBOM into Factorial. Nobody is sure yet exactly how it should be assembled, so the production lead opens a project for the first three prototypes. The team adds tasks as they figure out the order of operations, records weld pull-test results on each one, and requests cells from inventory as they go.
By the third prototype the process is stable. A manufacturing engineer writes a "Build battery pack" procedure from what the team learned, adds a part requirement on each step, and fixes the two places where Factorial flags the MBOM disagreeing with the EBOM. Two reviewers approve it and it is released. The production lead cuts ten work orders from it for the first production run.
Touched: Parts and EBOMs, Projects, Procedures, MBOM differences, Work Orders.
An Operator's Shift
An operator arrives at the battery station and opens its queue. The top task is "Install harness" on pack BP-0042. They check in so their time is recorded, read the instructions and drawing, and scan the harness's barcode to install it. The step asks for the torque on each terminal, so they enter four values. They mark the task completed. The next task, "Close enclosure," depended on this one, so it can start now.
Halfway through the shift, the lead moves an urgent pack to the top of the queue. The operator picks it up next.
Touched: Queues, Tasks, Barcodes, Data input, Dependencies.
An Instruction That Is Wrong
On pack BP-0047, an operator notices that the torque in the instructions disagrees with the latest drawing. They raise an observation from the task so the problem is recorded, then a manufacturing engineer opens a redline on that task. The task goes on hold, so nobody torques it to the wrong value in the meantime. The redline changes the value, a reviewer approves it, and it is applied. The hold is released and the operator continues.
The engineer also starts a new revision of the procedure with the corrected value. When it is released, every new work order uses it. Packs already in progress keep the revision they were cut from, so nothing changes under an operator mid-task.
Touched: Issues, Redlines, Holds, Review Center, Releasing a revision.
A Bad Batch of Parts
A supplier calls: one lot of battery cells may have a defect. Quality opens that lot in Factorial and follows its history to every battery pack the cells were installed into, and from each pack to the bike it went into. In a few minutes they have the list of affected serial numbers, including which bikes have already shipped. They raise an NCR and link the affected inventory, so the investigation and the units it affects are in one place.
Touched: Inventory history, History, Issues.
Where to Go Next
- Getting Started lays out the core workflow in five steps.
- Why Factorial explains what Factorial is built for, and what it is not.
- Procedures and Work Orders cover the two concepts most people use every day.