About our notes: how Shop Floor Notes is written

Shop Floor Notes is written for the managers and supervisors who run a small or mid-sized plant. This page explains how the notes are put together, so you can decide how much weight to give them.

What earns a page

A page earns its place if it could change what someone does on Monday morning. Topics come from the routine problems of a plant: keeping old equipment running, finding where a defect starts, replanning a week, getting a system used. If a subject is mostly theory, we say so or leave it out.

Worked examples with made-up numbers

When a guide shows a calculation, it shows every step and says the numbers are invented. The OEE guide is one case. The aim is that you can repeat the arithmetic with your own figures, and a made-up number is never offered as an industry average.

The manual comes first

Your equipment maker’s manual sets the intervals, lubricants, torque values and procedures for your machine, and it overrides anything here. Where a government safety rule applies, we link to the rule and do not paraphrase it from memory. Your safety lead has the final word on procedures in your plant. The preventive maintenance checklist works this way.

What you will not find

• Benchmarks without a source. There is no industry-average OEE here, because your own baseline is the number that matters.
• Vendor price lists, which go out of date too fast.
• Claims about what a particular product does, unless we have seen the source. If we have not, the article says so and tells you what to ask the vendor.
• Statistics we cannot trace to a primary source.

Where an engineer takes over

The notes are general information for people who already know their own plant. They are no engineering sign-off and do not replace a qualified engineer, an electrician or your safety lead. Bring that person in for guarding, electrical work, pressure systems or structural loads.

Who signs them

Pages are signed “The Shop Floor Notes editors”. We do not present any individual as an expert, and we do not publish testimonials or quotes from people we cannot identify.

Got a mistake to report?

Email contact@shopfloornotes.com with the page and the line. We look it up in the manual, standard or source it rests on, fix the page if you are right, and put a fresh date on it.