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Analysis

note

Factory Superstar is in Beta which means that some parts are a work-in-progress. The Analysis section is one of those parts. There will be more features soon.

Even though your day-to-day use of Factory Superstar is quick and easy, there's an awful lot of data being generated in the background.

Our goal for the Analytics section is for you to be able to see with one glance the performance of your business, and be able to make intelligent and informed decisions that will propel you to greater success.

Reports​

We're working on reports that give you insights into your business performance.

Current Inventory Value​

When your stock count is accurate, you can go to Analysis->Current Inventory Value. This shows you the current value of your stock (broken into labour and material costs). You can only know how much profit you've made in a period if you know exactly how much the value of your stock changed between the start of that period and the next.

This report is very powerful - it doesn't just add up the value of the items you've completed or the raw material costs, but it also takes into account the progress of each and every Production Order and even includes part made item values (both labour and material costs).

Timelines​

Timelines are a way of recording the changes you make to your business. They allow you to look back and see what effect any changes have made, or else you can look back and see a change, and the timeline entries allow you to work out how that change happened.

important

We think keeping a record of your changes (e.g. using Timelines) is one of the most important things you can do for your business. You can have all the analytical data in the world, but if you can't correlate that with whatever changes you're making then that data is just about useless.

Get into the habit of recording changes in Timelines. Your future self will thank you for it.

You can create as many Timelines as you want. These may be for things like:

  • Marketing (maybe you change the price of your products, or have a new website - are sales increasing as a result?)
  • Production (implemented a new production process? Has productivity increased as a result?)
  • Advertising (You're spending more on advertising - are you seeing an increase in Sales?)
  • Personnel (there was a spike in defective products in June - was there any staffing changes?)
example

Let's say you make a timeline called 'Advertising'. In this Timeline you add an entry whenever you make a change to how you advertise your business. So, you make a Timeline entry on the 12th October 2021, 'Took out an advertisement in Popular Mechanics magazine'. A year later you look back at your sales performance and see a spike in sales around the 30th October 2021. Is this spike in sales a result of your ad? Should you repeat that ad?

Of course, in reality you will be constantly making changes to your business. That's why Timelines are so useful - they allow you to correlate changes with performance so that you can work out what works and what doesn't.

Create and Use a Timeline​

Go to Analysis->Timelines. Click 'add Timeline'. Give your Timeline a name. Now you can add entries to that timeline. Simple.

beta

We're working on improvements to the entire Analysis offering in Factory Superstar. Timelines will be a part of this - the improvements will make it much easier to correlate Timeline entries with the analytical data gathered by Factory Superstar.

We highly recommend you keep Timelines, so that when this new functionality is released you already have useful data.