CIOs often tell me they are digitizing their factories. When I ask what has changed, the answer is usually that operators now enter production data on tablets.

How many pieces did you make? What was the target? Why did the line stop?

These are the same questions that used to sit in a logbook. The screen is new. The source of the information is the same.

There are benefits. Records are easier to find. Reports arrive sooner. Nobody has to read someone else’s handwriting. But if an operator forgets to record a stoppage, that stoppage is still missing. A dashboard cannot recover an event that was never entered.

The bigger opportunity in digitization is to change how we know what happened.

A machine can report when it stopped. A sensor can count a part passing through. Computer vision can measure a manual cycle. The record comes from the operation itself, rather than someone remembering to describe it later.

Automatic measurement can be wrong too. It needs to be checked. But once validated, it gives everyone a consistent record to work from. Supervisors can spend their time investigating losses instead of collecting numbers.

People still provide context. A system may detect that a workstation waited for twelve minutes. A supervisor can explain that the wrong material arrived. The explanation adds to the record; it should not have to create the event.

The factory of the future needs data sources that keep recording whether someone remembers, has time, or likes what the numbers say.

Putting a logbook on a tablet makes reporting easier.

Digitization becomes much more useful when reporting stops depending on someone filling it in.

Written by Vivaan Baid, co-founder, Optifye.