Digital transformation that survives the shop floor.
OrbitX finds where your plant loses information, builds the systems that keep it, and stays until supervisors run the shift from them. One senior team, from the first walk of the floor to the measured result.
- The team that diagnoses your floor is the team that delivers
- Our own solution, a platform from the market or a bespoke build, chosen by your process
- Integrates with the ERP and MES you already run
Most programmes fail at the handover, not the technology.
Industry 4.0 programmes rarely stall because the technology does not exist. They stall because a consultancy hands over a roadmap, a vendor hands over a licence, and nobody owns what happens on the floor in between. The World Economic Forum has a name for where that ends: pilot purgatory.
Pilots that never scale
A dashboard works on one line in one plant. Then the sponsor moves on, the budget closes and it never reaches the others. The pilot was not wrong. Nobody designed the rollout.
Advice separated from delivery
Strategy firms write the plan and vendors build to the specification. Neither owns whether it holds at two in the morning when the line stops, and that gap is where the value goes.
Systems the floor works around
Sound software, rejected by the people expected to use it. Adoption is not a training week at the end. It is a design constraint from the first sketch.
One team from the first floor walk to go-live.
Most firms in this market are built as a relay. We are built so that the person who studies your floor is the person who builds the fix.
The usual relay
- A partner sells the engagementContext handed over
- Analysts gather data and leave a reportContext handed over
- A vendor implements to a specificationContext handed over
- Adoption becomes a training week, and the floor goes back to the whiteboard
OrbitX
- The people who scope the work walk your floor across shifts
- The same people write a roadmap your own engineers could execute
- They build, integrate and test it on the line
- They stay through a full business cycle and measure against the baseline taken before the build
The right answer is not always software, and not always ours.
We license our own solution, implement platforms from the market and build bespoke applications. Which one you get is decided by your process. The audit fee is the same whichever route the roadmap points to.
Our own solution
Where what we have already built fits your process, licensed and configured against how your plant actually runs.
A platform from the market
Where another product fits better, implemented against your routings and shift patterns rather than its demo script.
Built for you
Where the process is genuinely yours and no product models it, bespoke applications on a data model designed to integrate.
No software at all
When a process fix costs less than a system, that is the recommendation you get.
Five capabilities, one accountable team.
Each one works as a standalone engagement. Together they cover a transformation from diagnosis to the tenth plant.
Operations & Transformation Consulting
Operations audit, OEE and loss analysis, a costed digital roadmap and technology selection scored on your process.
ExploreShop Floor Digitisation
Ten operating functions captured at source on one operational record, through an MES we implement or software we build.
ExploreMachine Connectivity & Integration
Data and monitoring from every machine, including the ones a vendor said could not be connected, reconciled with ERP, MES and QMS.
ExploreApplied AI, Data & Custom Software
A unified data platform, custom software for the process no product models, and AI where the data supports it.
ExploreAdoption, Support & Scale
Training and change management on the line, a rebuilt daily routine, benefit tracking and the playbook that gets past the first plant.
ExploreAll capabilities and ways to engage
From a technology selection of a week or two to a full plant programme, and how most clients start.
See allTen functions. One operational record.
Production, quality, maintenance, safety, utilities, traceability, stores, suppliers, workforce and the daily review usually keep ten versions of the truth.
Written to one record, a customer complaint traces back to a machine, a shift, an operator and a supplier lot without anyone opening a spreadsheet. That is the working core of a smart factory.
Four phases. The same people in every one.
The handover between diagnosis and delivery is where transformation programmes die, so we do not have one.
See the floor as it really runs
Across shifts and inside your systems, at every point where data stops moving.
A roadmap with a business case
Sequenced and costed, with build, buy or fix-the-process calls your engineers could execute.
Engineered for your floor
Connectivity, a unified data layer and digitised workflows, integrated with ERP and MES.
Until the floor owns it
Training on the line, routines rebuilt around the system, results measured against the baseline.
Where plants lose information. We look here first.
Every plant is different. The places where signal dies are not. These are the first things a Connected Floor Audit examines.
The number nobody can source
Every plant has an OEE figure in a monthly deck. Ask three people how it was calculated and you hear three answers. We trace it to the machine, or establish that it was never there.
The handover in a notebook
Shift knowledge that moves verbally, in a diary or not at all, and leaves the building when an experienced supervisor does.
The system bought and never used
A module licensed, configured and abandoned. We find out why before anyone proposes buying another.
The machines nobody asked
Equipment said to be impossible to connect. Usually it can be, through a retrofit sensor, a dry contact or an output port nobody tried.
Insights
Practical, sourced guidance for plant and operations leaders.
OEE, measured properly: definitions, the six big losses and the errors that distort the number
The ISO 22400-2 definitions, a worked example, Nakajima’s six big losses and seven errors that make OEE figures misleading.
6 min readSystems architectureISA-95 for plant leaders: where ERP ends, where MES begins, and why the boundary matters
The functional levels, the four areas of operations management, and a scoping exercise for deciding what MES and ERP should each own.
4 min readMachine connectivityConnecting legacy machines: a practical path from isolated equipment to usable data
A connectivity register, protocol choices by purpose, data with context, and an IEC 62443 security baseline for older equipment.
4 min readStart with the audit, not the software.
A fixed-scope diagnosis of where your plant loses information, what it costs you and what to fix first. The roadmap is yours to keep, whoever builds it.