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The Connected Floor Audit
A fixed-scope assessment of how your plant really runs, where it loses information and what to fix first. It is our digital maturity and Industry 4.0 readiness assessment, carried out on the floor, and the roadmap it produces is yours to keep.
What is a digital maturity assessment?
A structured look at how far a plant’s operations run on reliable data, and at what stands between it and the next step.
A questionnaire records how a plant sees itself. The audit is built from the floor instead: shifts observed, changeovers timed, systems opened and figures traced to their source. It also answers the question a readiness score leaves open, which is what to do first.
What the audit covers
The Ground and Map phases of the Orbit Method, run as one engagement by the people who would build what it recommends.
Operations and process audit
We walk the floor across shifts and map how work actually happens against how the SOP says it does. Changeovers get timed and handovers get watched.
OEE and loss analysis
Availability, performance and quality losses traced to a machine and a reason code, including whether your current OEE figure can be trusted.
Data-flow mapping
Every point where information stops moving: the handover in a notebook, the private spreadsheet, the reading taken and never used.
System landscape review
Every system in the estate, what it holds, who uses it and where the integration gaps are, including modules paid for and never switched on.
Machine readiness
Which machines can share data today, which need a retrofit sensor, and which a vendor has called impossible to connect.
Industry 4.0 readiness
Where the plant stands on connectivity, data, systems, skills and daily routines, judged against what your roadmap will need rather than a generic scale.
What you receive
Yours to keep and yours to take elsewhere. The roadmap is written so that your own engineers, or another firm, could execute it.
- Current-state operations mapHow work runs today, by shift, with the losses located.
- Quantified gap analysisWhere information and output are lost, and what each gap costs your operation.
- System landscapeWhat you own, what it does and where the gaps are.
- Sequenced roadmapWhat to fix first, with a build, buy or fix-the-process call for each step and the reasoning behind it.
- Costed business caseWhat each phase costs and what it returns, against a baseline measured before anything changes.
- Target architectureHow the pieces connect to what you already run, set out against ISA-95.
At a glance
| Detail | Connected Floor Audit |
|---|---|
| Duration | 2 to 4 weeks |
| Where | On your floor, across shifts, and inside your systems |
| Time from your team | Mostly supervisors, working around production |
| Fee | Fixed, set at the first call, and the same whichever route the roadmap points to |
| Best when | You know something is wrong but not what to fix first |
A free assessment has to end somewhere that pays for it. One you have commissioned can end wherever your operation points, including with another firm. That happens, and it is a legitimate outcome.
Common questions
How long does the audit take?
Typically two to four weeks, depending on the lines, shifts and systems in scope. The scope is agreed at the first call, before any work starts.
How much time does it need from our people?
Less than you might expect, and mostly from supervisors rather than management. We work around production; most of what we need comes from watching shifts run normally and reading data that already exists.
Is this the same as an Industry 4.0 readiness score?
A readiness score tells you where you stand against a reference model. The audit also tells you what to do about it: which losses to tackle first, what data you will need, and whether to configure a platform, build, or fix the process without software.
Do we have to build with you afterwards?
No. The roadmap is written so that your own engineers could execute it, or another firm could. You are free to take it either way.
Book the audit.
Tell us about your plant. We reply within one business day with whether we can help and a proposed scope.