Manufacturing
Manufacturing Communication Displays in Pittsburgh
Production floors generate more information than anyone can act on. A display does not fix that by itself — it fixes it when it shows the four numbers that change behaviour and nothing else.
What belongs on a floor display
Shift and production status
What is running, what is behind, what is next. Updated by whoever owns the number, not by IT.
Safety messaging
Days without incident, current hazards, PPE reminders, near-miss follow-ups. Visible every shift instead of once a quarter in a meeting.
Visual management boards
The 5S and KPI boards that currently live on a whiteboard marker and a sheet of paper, kept current automatically.
Break room communication
Benefits, training dates, overtime sign-ups, announcements that otherwise reach nobody.
A factory floor is hostile to screens
Dust, vibration, heat, coolant mist and forklift traffic. A display mounted at eye level in a walkway gets hit; a display mounted too high is never read. Position matters more here than in any other setting.
We use commercial panels rated for continuous operation and mount them where they are visible from the work area but out of the traffic path — usually above a line, at a pinch point, or at the entrance to a cell. Where the environment is genuinely harsh, we will say that a sealed enclosure is needed rather than install a panel that fails in a year.
Where the numbers come from
The honest answer for most small and mid-size manufacturers is: a spreadsheet, or a person typing it in. That is fine, and it is what we set up first — a board that is updated by hand every shift is still better than no board.
If your ERP or MES exposes a report or a feed, a display can often pull from it automatically. That is a real project rather than a same-day install, and we will tell you which one you are looking at instead of implying everything integrates with everything.
Small improvements that show up fast
One board, one number
Start with the metric that is actually argued about on the floor. If nobody disagrees about it, it does not belong on the screen.
Updated by the shift lead
Two minutes at handover. No IT ticket, no dashboard project, no consultant.
Add from there
Safety, quality, schedule adherence. Each addition earns its place or comes off.
Manufacturing display questions
Can it show live data from our ERP?
Sometimes, if there is a report or feed to read. That is a scoped piece of work, quoted separately, and we will tell you honestly if it is not worth it.
What about dust and washdown areas?
Standard commercial panels are not sealed. In washdown or heavy particulate areas we specify an enclosure or place the display outside that zone.
Can different cells show different boards?
Yes. Each screen runs its own content, all managed from one place.
Who maintains it after install?
Whoever owns the numbers. We train them, and we stay available for the hardware.
Insurance, electrical, and who does what
Plants ask two questions before anyone walks the floor: a certificate of insurance naming the company, and who is touching the electrical. Both are fair, and both have a straight answer.
We provide a certificate of insurance naming your company before the visit — ask and it comes the same day. We are not electricians. Minor work — connecting to an existing circuit, or fitting a receptacle next to the screen where local rules allow it — we handle as part of the install. A new circuit, a disconnect, anything that opens a panel or needs a permit is a licensed electrician’s job, and in most plants that is your own maintenance team. We mount, cable, and get power to the screen at the agreed location. If there is no power at the mounting point, that gets resolved before install day rather than improvised on it.
Around Pittsburgh that usually means a plant in the Mon Valley, out in Beaver County, or an industrial park off the parkway — different buildings, same three questions about the wall, the power and who can get us in.
What it actually costs to run
One thing worth knowing before the call: every screen runs on a signage platform subscription, billed monthly per screen. It is quoted with the install and it applies whether or not you ever ask us to change anything — that is simply what running a screen costs. If you want us handling content updates as well, that is a separate monthly arrangement.
The displays are commercial 4K UHD panels — 3840×2160 — rated for 16 hours a day, seven days a week with a three-year warranty. Content is designed at 1080p and scales cleanly onto the 4K panel, which is what keeps type readable from across a room.
Walk the floor with us
A consultation tells you where a board is visible, where it is safe, and what it would take.
Support that fits a shift pattern
A board on the floor that stops updating is a safety message nobody read. When it fails you do not want to explain your plant to a stranger reading from a script — you want the person who mounted it and remembers which network drop it is on. That is the reason to buy this locally, and it is the part we are actually good at.