SmartLink
Manufacturing systems

Factory production software in Pakistan: cost, rollout and capture

Factory production software in Pakistan gets bought when the shift report and the ledger stop agreeing and nobody can say which one is wrong. SmartLink Services configures production orders, routings, shop floor confirmation and output reporting from Karachi, tied back to the business system rather than run beside it. This page answers the questions that arrive before the demonstration. What production software costs at published market rates, how long a single plant rollout runs from the site walk to a stable shift, and the decision that sets both of those numbers, which is how finely the floor confirms the work it does. We specify capture devices and we do not sell them.

Discuss this service
Layer
MES / production execution
Data
Live shop-floor entry
Link
Integrated to ERP
Overview

Production data should leave the floor as it happens.

Most plants already know what they made yesterday. The problem is when they know it and how much argument it takes to agree. A supervisor writes counts on a board, a clerk types them into a spreadsheet after the shift, and by the time the number reaches planning it has been rounded, corrected and reconciled against a different rounding. Nobody is being careless. The system simply was never designed to be fed while the line is running, so people feed it afterwards, from memory and from paper.

We build manufacturing execution on the routings and work centres your plant actually uses, including the alternate routings and the rework loops that were never entered because the original consultant ran out of time. Confirmation happens at the operation, on a terminal the operator can reach without removing gloves. Scrap and rework are captured where they occur, with a reason attached, because a yield figure without a cause code tells you the size of the loss and nothing at all about its origin. Output then posts back to ERP as a transaction rather than a monthly summary.

None of this requires replacing your automation. We read from what is already installed, through OPC UA where the vendor supports it and Modbus where they do not, and we sit above the control layer rather than inside it. SmartLink does not sell, supply or install plant hardware, sensors or programmable logic controllers. That stays with your automation vendor, who is accountable for it. Our work begins at the point where a count, a state or a reading becomes a business record, and it ends at the ERP transaction.

Scope

What Factory & production software covers

Everything below is agreed in writing before any factory & operations work starts, so both sides know what is in and what is not.

What the work covers

  • Bill of materials and routing structures in system
  • Production order release and shop-floor confirmation
  • Machine, work centre and labour capacity modelling
  • Scrap, rework and yield capture at source
  • Shift-wise output and OEE reporting
  • Barcode and terminal-based confirmation screens

What you get at handover

  • Configured production model and routings
  • Shop-floor confirmation screens
  • OEE and output dashboard
  • Operator training material
  • Integration specification to ERP

Typically involves

Barcode terminals SQL reporting
Discuss this service
01

Why operators work around the confirmation screen

Confirmation screens fail for reasons that have nothing to do with software quality. The operator is wearing gloves and the touch targets were sized during a design review on a laptop. The area is loud, so an audible confirmation is useless. There is condensation on the panel, or oil, or flour. The screen asks for eight fields when the operator knows three of them and would have to walk to the office to find the rest. So the operator presses whatever passes validation, and the shift supervisor corrects it the next morning.

Fixing this is mostly a matter of removing choices. Default the operation from the order the terminal is logged into. Default the quantity from the counter where a counter exists. Ask for a reason code only when the entry is an exception, and offer the four reasons that account for most of them rather than a list of forty inherited from a corporate standard. Where a barcode can answer a question, scan it. Every field that has to be typed with gloves on is a field that will eventually be guessed.

Latency deserves the same attention. A screen that takes several seconds to accept a confirmation trains people to batch their entries, which returns you to the end of shift spreadsheet by another route. Write locally, queue, and synchronise, so a network drop on the far side of the plant does not stop production reporting. Then measure the workaround rather than banning it. If one station corrects a large share of its confirmations the following day, the screen at that station is wrong, and that is a design finding rather than a discipline problem.

  • Touch targets, contrast and glove operation tested at the station, not at a desk
  • Fields defaulted from the order, the terminal and the counter wherever a default is safe
  • Exception reason codes kept short and ranked by how often they are genuinely used
  • Local write and queued synchronisation, so a network drop does not stop reporting
  • Correction rates reviewed per station as a design signal rather than a discipline issue
02

Routings that describe the plant as it is today

Production master data ages badly. A routing is entered during implementation, the line is rebalanced two years later, an operation is merged into another, and nobody updates the standard because the ERP routing is not what anyone works from. Planning still uses it. So the plan says an order takes a certain number of hours through a work centre that no longer exists in that form, the plan is wrong, and the planners learn to add a private buffer. Once planners keep private buffers, every downstream figure becomes an estimate of an estimate.

Rebuilding the model starts on the floor with the people who run it. Which operations really happen, in which order, on which equipment, and what the alternates are when the primary machine is down. Setup and changeover are separated from run time, because they behave differently and a single blended figure hides the thing you most want to manage. Rework loops are modelled explicitly rather than treated as a repeat of the original operation, since a reworked unit consumes capacity twice and should be visible doing so.

Keeping it current is the harder half. A routing change needs an owner, a review point and a recorded reason, otherwise the model drifts back within a year. We prefer a small standing review tied to engineering change and to any line rebalancing, rather than an annual data cleanse that nobody has time for. Where a standard is deliberately optimistic because it is used for costing, say so in the system rather than in a conversation, and keep a separate planning value. Two honest numbers are easier to manage than one contested one.

  • Operations, sequences and alternate routings confirmed with the people who run the line
  • Setup and changeover time held separately from run time on every operation
  • Rework modelled as its own consumption of capacity rather than a silent repeat
  • A named owner and a review trigger for every routing change, tied to engineering change
  • Separate costing and planning standards where the business genuinely needs both
01

What factory production software costs in Pakistan

Typical market rates in Pakistan fall into three bands. A focused implementation at a single location is quoted at PKR 800,000 to 1,500,000. A mid sized scope of five to seven modules with a mobile element sits at PKR 1,500,000 to 3,000,000. Enterprise scope with several sites, manufacturing and integrations starts at PKR 3,000,000. Published module pricing puts manufacturing at PKR 300,000 to 600,000, a mobile application at PKR 400,000 to 800,000 and multi location capability at PKR 200,000 to 500,000. Subscription products are commonly quoted around PKR 2,500 per user per month, and on a shop floor the user count is the number that matters, because operators are many and planners are few.

Inside those bands, the production model that factory production software runs on is the labour. Every work centre needs a definition, a calendar and a rate. Every routing needs its operations in the order the plant actually performs them, with setup and run time separated, and most plants discover during this exercise that the routing in the system describes a line that was changed two years ago. Confirmation screens are built per role rather than per module: what a press operator sees at three in the morning wearing gloves is not what a packing supervisor needs at a desk. Label formats and the printers that produce them are specified by us and bought by you.

Two items are underestimated in almost every quotation we are asked to compare against. Training is the first, and it is priced per shift rather than per site, because the night shift has to be trained at night by somebody who is there. The interface to the business system is the second: confirmations, goods movements and scrap postings each need their failure handling, their retry and their reconciliation, and an interface quoted on its happy path is quoted at about half its real cost. Every figure above is market pricing. A real figure follows discovery, once we have walked the line during a working shift and counted the capture points ourselves.

  • Work centres, calendars and rates built individually rather than copied from a template
  • Routings verified operation by operation against what the line actually does today
  • Confirmation screens designed per role, including the one used in gloves at three in the morning
  • Training priced per shift, since the night crew has to be trained on nights
  • The ERP interface costed with retry, alerting and daily reconciliation included
02

How long a production software rollout takes

Published implementation timelines give three bands worth knowing. A focused scope goes live in two to three months, a mid sized scope in three to four, and enterprise scope across several plants in four to six months or longer. Reported go live figures agree with that shape, putting a focused single company at six to twelve weeks and an SME at three to six months. One plant first, always, and the second plant is much faster because the template has already met a real shop floor.

Routing verification is the item that most often moves a date, and it is manual work performed by people who also have production to run. Walking a routing means standing at each operation with the supervisor, timing what is actually done, and recording the steps that were added informally and never written down. That cannot be done from an office and it cannot be done during the busiest week of the month.

Three plant specific things stretch the rest. Devices have to be proved in the environment they will live in rather than in a meeting room, so a scanner is tested where there is dust, wash down or condensation before anybody buys forty of them. Network coverage gets discovered during the site walk and remediated by somebody else entirely, usually on their timescale. And the pilot has to run at representative volume, which means it cannot be quietly scheduled into a slow fortnight to protect a date. Peak season stops the project, as it should, and we plan around it rather than through it.

  • One plant taken to a stable shift before the second site is started
  • Routing verification walked at the operation with the supervisor, timed rather than remembered
  • Devices proved in dust, wash down or condensation before a bulk purchase is made
  • Network remediation tracked as a dependency owned by somebody outside the project
  • Pilot run at representative volume, with peak season treated as a fixed obstacle
03

Confirming at the operation or at the order

This is the decision that sets the price, the training burden and the value of every report the system will ever produce, and it is usually taken by accident. Order level confirmation means one entry when the order finishes: quantity good, quantity scrapped, time taken. It is cheap, it is quick, one terminal serves an area, and operators accept it within a shift because it replaces a form they already fill in. What it cannot give you is any view of work in progress during the run, scrap attributed to the operation that caused it, or genealogy at operation level when a customer asks which press ran a particular batch.

Operation level confirmation means an entry at each step. It buys live work in progress, scrap by operation, real capacity feedback that makes the next plan better, and the trace an auditing customer expects. It costs a device at each step, a few seconds per confirmation multiplied by several thousand confirmations a shift, and an operator population that has to be trained and kept trained as people move between lines. The second cost is the one that gets underestimated. Seconds are cheap until they are counted across a year.

What we usually recommend is neither extreme. Confirm at the operation where value or risk concentrates, which in most plants is a short list: the press, the filler, the operation after which rework becomes impossible, the packing line where the label goes on. Confirm at order level everywhere else. Write that list down with the reason against each entry, and revisit it when the product mix changes rather than only adding to it.

There is a useful test question before anybody decides. Name a decision you would take differently if you had operation level data next month. If nobody in the room can answer, order level is sufficient for now and the money belongs somewhere else. One consequence cannot be undone, so it belongs in the decision: history recorded at order level cannot be re-cut to operation level later. If a customer audit or a regulator is likely to ask for operation detail within two years, record it from the start. We do not supply the terminals, scanners or plant hardware that either choice requires, we specify what the software needs and you buy it.

  • Order level confirmation where the run is short and the trace requirement is modest
  • Operation level confirmation at the steps where value or risk actually concentrates
  • Confirmation time counted across a shift rather than judged a few seconds at a time
  • A written list of which operations are confirmed, revisited when the product mix changes
  • The choice made before go live, since order level history cannot be re-cut later
How we deliver

Delivering Factory & production software

Plant software is scoped against a physical site, so the first two steps happen on the floor rather than in a meeting room. Everything after that is arranged around a production calendar that will not move for us.

  1. 01

    Discover

    Walk the line during the shift being designed for. Where the batch number is written on tape, which machine is read off a display into a notebook, where the network drops at goods-in.

  2. 02

    Blueprint

    Traceability level, confirmation points and the definition of good output, scrap and rework are agreed by production and quality together. Downtime reason codes are written before anybody configures a screen.

  3. 03

    Build

    Screens are built for gloves and a wet hand: few fields, large targets, a scan instead of typing. Terminals go on the line where the work happens, not at a desk in the supervisor's office.

  4. 04

    Test

    Operators run a real order on one line for a full shift, including a changeover and a rejected unit. If a scan needs two hands or a screen times out mid-changeover, we find out here.

  5. 05

    Go live

    One line, one product family, one shift, with the paper fallback printed and rehearsed before the first confirmation is posted. Stock counts reconcile to the ERP before the second line starts.

  6. 06

    Run

    Spare scanners and terminals sit on site with a swap procedure a supervisor can follow. Bills of material and routings get named owners, and somebody walks the line periodically to check the system against reality.

Working together

Start where the data is entered

The order in which this work is done matters more than the tooling. Capture first, at the operation, in a form that survives gloves and noise and a bad network day. Then the model, so the capture has something honest to attach to. Then the reporting, once the inputs are trustworthy enough to defend. Plants that reverse that sequence end up with a dashboard fed by a spreadsheet, which is the situation they were trying to leave behind.

We work alongside your ERP rather than around it, and alongside your automation vendor rather than in place of them. What you get is a production record created where production happens, with the operators who create it able to explain what they entered and why. That is the condition every later improvement depends on, and it is usually the piece that was skipped.

Credentials

Accreditations behind Factory & operations

Plant systems sit between equipment we do not supply and business systems we do, so accreditation matters most at the joins.

Oracle

Partner

Oracle SCM and EBS manufacturing modules for work orders, routings and costing, with the plant reporting database tuned so a shift report returns while the supervisor is still standing at the terminal.

Microsoft

Partner

Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management where that is the platform, plus Power BI dashboards showing downtime by reason code on a screen the plant manager sees each morning.

Google

Partner

Google Cloud is where multi-site plant data gets consolidated when each factory runs its own instance, so group reporting stops depending on spreadsheets emailed in from each site after close.

FBR digital invoicing

Compliant integrations

Despatch from the plant triggers the sales invoice, so the goods issue, the invoice and the FBR submission stay in step. Gate passes carry the same document number as the tax invoice.

HIPAA

Compliant practices

Contract manufacturing of patient specific products puts a patient name on a batch record. Those fields are restricted on the shop floor terminal, logged, and covered by a business associate agreement.

Client words

What Factory & operations clients say

Comments from people who run factory & operations systems day to day.

  • The team spent two days on the floor before they proposed anything, which I did not expect. They noticed that our scrap was being written off as a variance instead of recorded as returning metal, and that one change altered how we look at recovery on every press.
    Plant Manager Aluminium extrusion operation
  • The handover was the part I judged them on. Configuration decisions documented with the reasoning, our administrators trained properly, and a checklist we actually worked through. We run it ourselves now, and calling them is a choice rather than a necessity.
    Head of Shared Services Multi site manufacturing group
  • What sold us was that they argued with our brief. We asked for a reporting layer and they came back saying the reporting was fine, the batch data underneath it was not, and fixing that first would cost less. That turned out to be right. Our first mock recall after go live took an afternoon instead of the better part of a week.
    Finance Director Food manufacturing group, Karachi
Questions

Questions about Factory & production software

Typical market rates in Pakistan run PKR 800,000 to 1,500,000 for a focused single site scope, PKR 1,500,000 to 3,000,000 for five to seven modules with a mobile element, and PKR 3,000,000 upwards for multi site manufacturing with integrations. A manufacturing module is published at PKR 300,000 to 600,000. Routing condition and confirmation granularity move the figure most. We quote after discovery.

Published timelines put a focused scope at two to three months, a mid sized scope at three to four, and several plants at four to six months or longer. Reported go live figures agree. The usual reason a date moves is routing verification, which is manual work done at the operation by supervisors who also have production to run, and it cannot be done during the busiest week.

Ask what decision you would take differently with operation level data. If nobody can name one, order level is enough and costs far less to run. Most plants end up confirming at the operation only where value or risk concentrates, the press or the packing line, and at order level elsewhere. Decide before go live, because order level history cannot be re-cut afterwards.

That is the normal starting position rather than an obstacle, and we would far rather find it during discovery than during the pilot. Correcting them is manual work walked at the line with your supervisors, and it belongs in the plan as work with named owners and dates. Confirmations against a routing that does not match the line produce numbers nobody will trust.

With a short reason code list chosen by the people who use it, presented on the same screen as the confirmation rather than on another one. Long code lists get answered with whatever is first in the drop down, which is worse than no data. Where rework is a route rather than a write off, it becomes its own order so the cost lands somewhere a supervisor can see it.

No. Production software sits above the shop floor and reports into the business system, which keeps the stock, the costing and the ledger. The interface between them carries confirmations, goods movements and scrap, and it needs an owner by name. Where the ERP production module can do the job on its own, we will say so rather than sell a second system to support.

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