Low-Volume & Custom Manufacturing
A different job on the machine every few hours doesn't mean you can't know how the shop is performing. 10in6 tracks output, setup time and quality checks for each job, set up for a floor where few orders repeat and the routing changes from one to the next.
What makes visibility difficult in this environment
Custom jobs arrive with different routings, priorities and resource needs, and the queue changes daily. Scheduling tools built for repetitive production assume a stable sequence that this work never has.
When every job is different, setup and changeover times vary widely. If nobody times them, efficiency estimates rest on a guess at setup, and the long setups never get looked at.
Paper quality records for custom work vary with whoever filled them in, and they're hard to find later. The checks need to change with the job type, which one fixed checklist can't do.
When every job looks different, it's easy to miss patterns. The same tooling issue, operator gap, or material problem can repeat across dozens of work orders before anyone notices.
Job-level visibility without a custom development project
Production and quality are recorded against each job or work order, so a one-off run gets the same tracking as a repeat order. The schedule holds the whole high-mix queue with its routings and priorities.
- Schedule and sequencing — manage a high-mix job queue with routing and priority visibility
- Changeover and setup time by job — track actual setup time per product to identify variability
- Job-level production reporting — output, OEE, and efficiency at the job or work order level
- Issues tracker — log and track issues across jobs to surface recurring root causes
- Configurable quality checks — quality documentation that adapts to job type and routing
- Operator performance by job — visibility into how efficiency varies across operators and job types
Efficiency improvement within six months — typical for custom and low-volume operations implementing 10in6
Set up for a high-mix floor
Configured to your routings
Quality checks, scheduling logic, reporting formats and traceability requirements are configured to how your jobs flow, including the ones that don't follow a standard routing.
Issues surface across varied work
The issues tracker works at the job level, but it also rolls up across jobs. Recurring tooling problems, material issues, or operator gaps that repeat across unique work orders become visible patterns instead of isolated incidents.
No big-bang implementation
We implement alongside your team while production keeps running. A first line is typically live within two to four weeks, starting with whatever will pay back soonest.
Job tracking and maintenance for a varied floor
Common questions from custom & low-volume shops
- Does OEE even make sense for low-volume, high-mix operations?
- Yes — when the system accounts for it. OEE becomes meaningful in high-mix environments when ideal cycle times are configured per product and changeovers are tracked as their own category rather than buried in downtime. 10in6 measures efficiency per job and per product, so you can compare performance across a varied mix instead of averaging it into noise.
- Can quality documentation adapt to each custom job?
- Yes. Quality checks are configurable by job type and routing, so a one-off job gets the checks that apply to it — with work instructions and pass/fail criteria on screen — rather than forcing every product through the same generic checklist.
- Our jobs rarely repeat — what visibility can we actually get?
- Even when no two jobs are the same, the patterns repeat: downtime reasons, setup times, operator performance, and bottleneck locations. 10in6 captures per-job data and surfaces cross-job trends, so recurring problems stand out even across a constantly changing product mix.
- Can 10in6 track setup and changeover time by job?
- Yes — setup and changeover are captured per product and per job, separate from unplanned downtime. That's usually where low-volume operations find their biggest wins: knowing which changeovers run long, on which equipment, and why.
The problems low-volume and custom manufacturers bring to us most
Shift reports still built in spreadsheets
Replace end-of-shift typing with reports built from the machines, ready for the morning meeting.
Read the answer → SchedulingA schedule that changes faster than the paper
Get the current job sequence to each line and see progress against it as the shift runs.
Read the answer → Error-proofingHuman error on work that rarely repeats
The four levels of error-proofing and how to choose the first places to apply them.
Read the answer → QualityThe same defects keep coming back
Why defects recur and the six practices that stop them being made, from on-time checks to traceability.
Read the answer →After go-live, your team runs it. Operators, downtime and scrap codes, products and targets, shift schedules, checks, alerts, emailed reports and real-time boards are yours to change. New machines, modules and custom reports go through a 10in6 project manager who already knows your plant. How the delivery model works →
See 10in6 applied to your operation
Tell us about your job mix and your equipment. We'll work out how jobs, cycle times and downtime would be tracked when every run is different.