NC Line

Published 23 August 2026

A sheet metal manufacturer with three hundred employees runs the company on clearly defined KPIs — but the numbers were carried to meetings by hand, from the ERP through spreadsheets. SBID built shared data models on the KARAT ERP and a set of reports covering twelve areas of the business, from sales to maintenance. Each of the 37 key KPIs now has a target, a plan and a year-on-year comparison in one place, and production sees OEE down to the individual workplace.

Problem: numbers out of date before they reached the meeting

NC Line had its KPIs well defined — from value-added productivity through scrap rates to on-time delivery. The problem was the route to the numbers. Data was pulled from the ERP, worked out by hand in spreadsheets, and only then made it into the deck for the monthly meeting.

Each department kept its own way of calculating, so the same metric came out differently between units and part of the meeting went on arguing whose number was right.

Solution 1: a shared data model on the ERP

The foundation is a shared semantic model on the KARAT ERP. It brings together close to fifty tables and adds a table of targets and plans that the business maintains itself. Every report draws on it, so results have no way of drifting apart.

• Orders, production sheets and operations as the basis for production metrics
• Non-conformities, complaints and internal scrap for quality
• The general ledger and chart of accounts for EBITDA, OPEX and value-added productivity
• Stock movements, goods receipts and purchase orders for purchasing and warehousing
• Attendance, employment records and timesheets for HR
• A separate table of targets and plans the business changes without touching the reports
• Row-level security, so everyone sees only their own cost centres

Solution 2: a report for every department

Each unit has its own report with a dashboard and detail pages for individual KPIs. The structure is the same everywhere: current value, target, gap to target, and a comparison with the same period last year.

• Sales: quotation win rate, order profitability, new customers and receivables
• Production: downtime, cost of poor quality, productivity and working-time utilisation
• Purchasing: supplier OTIF for materials and subcontracting, stock turnover and price savings
• Quality and engineering: internal DPPM, non-conformities and cost of poor quality
• Maintenance: preventive maintenance plan fulfilment, service response time and maintenance cost
• Dispatch, logistics and warehouses: lead time, OTIF, internal supply reliability and stocktake variances
• HR: headcount, turnover, absence, attendance and workplace injuries
• Management: EBITDA, OPEX, revenue, productivity and employee satisfaction in one dashboard

Solution 3: OEE down to the individual workplace

Production got a dedicated OEE model. It is calculated across all three components — availability, performance and quality — and breaks down to the specific workplace, from the laser through bending and shot blasting to the paint shop.

Performance compares standard hours against hours actually worked; quality is the share of good parts in total output. Downtime is not tracked as a single total either: each cause stands on its own, so it is visible how many hours went into setup and programming, colour changes, work not ready, material handling or training.

The shift supervisor knows where capacity is lost, and maintenance has grounds for deciding where to direct preventive work — instead of debating the causes of stoppages from memory.

Solution 4: capacity against the sales plan

Capacity planning is built on the same data. The report compares the hours required by the sales plan against the real working fund — after subtracting holidays, sickness and other absence — and shows uncovered capacity both in hours and in full-time equivalents.

Subcontracted capacity is part of the calculation, so it is clear in advance how much work will have to go out of house and how much in-house production can absorb.

Result: a company run on numbers, not impressions

• 37 KPIs with a target, a plan and year-on-year comparison in one place
• 114 report pages on shared models — departments' numbers no longer contradict each other
• OEE across all three components, with downtime broken down by cause
• Planning sees uncovered capacity before it turns into a delay
• The monthly meeting runs on a live report, not on an export into a deck
• The business changes targets and plans itself, without waiting for a report update