What is production tracking software?
Production tracking software records what a shop actually produced against what it planned, hour by hour, and captures the reason whenever the two differ. That gives you a live picture of job status during the day instead of a variance report at the end of the month.
Do operators have to enter a lot of data?
No. Tracking is a few taps on a kiosk screen: output for the hour, and a reason code if the target was missed. The Floor View is built around removing barriers rather than monitoring people, so the fastest thing an operator can do is flag what blocked them.
Does it work without machine sensors or an MES?
Yes. Most small manufacturers start with manual hour-by-hour entry on a tablet at the cell, which is enough to build a reliable loss Pareto. Machine data can supplement it later, but it is not required to get value.
How is this different from tracking production in a spreadsheet?
A spreadsheet records numbers; it does not connect them. Here the same entries build the daily board, the loss Pareto, the escalation list and the leadership report automatically, so nobody spends Monday morning rebuilding the picture.