Shop floor control is the layer between a planned work order and a finished one. It decides what each station runs next, captures what actually happened while it ran, and puts that record back into the ERP without anyone re-typing it. NetSuite plans the work well; it does not stand at the machine.
FactoryBridge is that layer, built natively on NetSuite records.
An operator signs in and chooses a location and a work center. From that point the console shows only the work whose current routing operation sits at that station — not a filtered view of everything, a list that is already the right list. The scoping chain is reflected in the URL, so a tablet can be bookmarked to a station and reopen there after a restart.
Work centers and locations are read from NetSuite as they already exist, including sub-locations, so there is no second plant model to maintain.
Each operation is timed in two independent phases. Setup and run are recorded separately rather than as a single production total — which is the difference between knowing a job took four hours and knowing that ninety minutes of it was changeover. For anyone trying to reduce changeover cost, that split is the whole measurement.
Both phases confirm before they close, stating the elapsed time that will be written and warning that it cannot be undone.
A pause cannot be recorded without selecting a reason. The list is your plant's downtime taxonomy — machine breakdown, machine maintenance, material quality issue, material shortage and so on. Because the reason is captured at the moment of stoppage rather than reconstructed at the end of a shift, downtime analysis is built from evidence rather than recollection.
Coded pause reasons are what turn a timer into downtime analysis, and later into a defensible availability figure. Getting that reason list right for your plant matters more than almost any other configuration decision.
Factory wifi is not office wifi. If a tablet loses its connection, submissions made on it are held and can be synced once it is back online — component issues, completions, co-yield and yield variance. Reading new work orders does need a connection, because the work orders live in NetSuite. It is resilience for the job in hand rather than fully disconnected operation, and it is worth setting that expectation honestly.
For the wider execution picture see NetSuite MES; for scheduling and capacity, FactorySync; for machine-level signals, FactoryPulse. The full suite is on NetSuite manufacturing add-ons.
Explore FactoryBridgeNo. It executes them. The work orders, items, lots, bins and locations are NetSuite records; FactoryBridge reads them and writes completions, component issues and time back against them.
Yes. Location and work center are chosen per session rather than fixed to the device, so a shared tablet can move between stations.
The routing gate. If the previous operation has not been started, the screen refuses to start this one and explains why.
The audit log records every action with its operator and timestamp, and each operator can see their own history under My Activity — useful when someone needs to evidence what they recorded and when.