Daily production report format in Excel for a factory
A daily production report format in Excel for a factory: fourteen columns, what to write in each, three rules, and how to read it each morning and each week.
The supervisor says the day went fine. On Friday a customer calls about the brackets promised for Thursday, and you learn that Press 2 stood for half of Tuesday's night shift. Nobody hid it. There was no sheet in which a short day shows up by itself. A daily production report is that sheet: one line for every machine in every shift, with what was planned, what was made, and why the two differ.
Daily production report format: one row per machine and shift
| Column | What to write | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Date | The production day | Filters one day or one week |
| Shift | Day, night or general | Shows which shift falls short |
| Machine or line | The machine, line or bay, by the name used on the floor | A loss belongs to one machine, not to "the plant" |
| Job card and item | Job card number, party and item | Ties the pieces to an order and its promised date |
| Operator | One name | You know whom to ask |
| Target | Pieces planned for this shift, written before the shift starts | Without a plan there is nothing to compare with |
| Made | All pieces produced, good and bad | The count from the floor |
| Rejected | Pieces rejected or sent for rework | Made is not the same as usable |
| Good pieces | Made minus rejected. Fills itself in the Excel file | The only number dispatch can count on |
| Short by | Target minus good pieces. Fills itself in the Excel file | The gap that needs a reason |
| Minutes lost | Minutes the machine stood in this shift | Shows what a stoppage cost |
| Reason | One from a fixed list: material short, machine breakdown, operator absent and so on | The same words every day, so that reasons can be counted |
| Action by | What will be done, and one name | A reason without an action comes back next week |
| Remarks | Anything the next shift must know | The handover in one line |
If one machine runs two jobs in a shift, write two rows. Keep the list of reasons short and make it your own. If supervisors cannot remember it, every row will say "other".
Shift-wise or machine-wise production report?
The format above is both. Each row carries a date, a shift and a machine, so a filter gives the shift-wise or the machine-wise report from the same sheet. Do not start a new file for each day.
Three rules that keep the report alive
- The target is written first. The supervisor writes the row at the start of the shift, with the job card and the target. A target written after the count is not a plan.
- The supervisor fills it before leaving the floor. Not the office the next morning, from memory. The count comes from the job card or the counter on the machine.
- A short row needs a reason and a name. "Short by 540" with an empty reason goes back to the supervisor. The reason is picked from the list.
How to read it every morning
- Red rows first. These are yesterday's rows where the good pieces fell short of the target. Read the reason and the action, and ask only about those.
- Then the promised date. If a short row belongs to a job that is due this week, tell sales today.
- Then today's targets. Rows with a target and no count are the shifts still to report.
What to look at every week
Filter the last six working days and count three things:
- Minutes lost on each machine. A machine that tops the list two weeks running needs maintenance, not a reminder.
- How often each reason appears. If "material short" leads, the problem sits in purchase, not on the floor.
- Rejected pieces for each item. A rejection that repeats on one item points at a tool, a drawing or a setting.
Sheet or system?
A shared sheet is enough while one or two supervisors fill it at the end of the shift and the owner reads it every morning. It also builds two habits that no software can add later: a target before the shift, and a reason for every gap.
The sheet starts to fail when supervisors must update from a phone on the floor, when a breakdown is known only the next morning, and when sales still has to call the floor for a date. At that stage we set up a Production Job Tracker on your own job cards, in which every job card moves through its stages, a stuck job carries its reason and the owner gets one report in the evening. It is not production planning or costing software, and Tally stays for accounts. You can try the live demo without signing up.
If the orders behind these job cards are not written in one place yet, start with the order register format.
Take the format with you:Daily production report (Excel, 48 KB)
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