Peakboard GmbH
About us
Peakboard is an innovative low-code solution for industrial data visualisation that has been specially developed for use in production, logistics and other operational areas. Peakboard can be used to create customised dashboards that make relevant information visible in real time exactly where it is needed - directly at the workplace, on machines or on large displays in the production hall. The solution combines OT (Operational Technology) and IT in a simple way and consists of a combination of free design software (Peakboard Designer) and powerful visualisation hardware (Peakboard Box) or a BYOD version (Bring Your Own Device). This allows data from a wide variety of sources to be brought together, structured and utilised - without any complex infrastructure or costly IT projects.
What makes Peakboard special is its ability to visualise production, machine or ERP data in real time and interactively. Getting started is easy thanks to the low-code approach, as the Peakboard Designer user interface works via drag-and-drop and can be operated without programming knowledge. At the same time, the solution offers a high degree of flexibility: Peakboard supports numerous data sources, including OPC UA, MQTT, Siemens S7, Modbus, SAP, SQL databases, Excel, REST APIs, SharePoint and many more. This makes Peakboard the interface between IT and OT - clear, fast and directly at the point of action.
A key advantage of Peakboard is the ability to interact. Dashboards are not only there to display data, but can also process input - for example via touchscreens, scanners, buttons or RFID readers. For example, employees can report faults, indicate material requirements or confirm work steps. At the same time, each Peakboard Box runs decentrally and autonomously, which means that no central server infrastructure is required. This saves costs, reduces complexity and makes the solution robust - ideal for industrial environments.
By using Peakboard, companies benefit from greater transparency and faster response times. Information that was previously scattered across different systems or only available with a time delay is suddenly available in real time - visually processed and tailored to the specific application. This creates a better basis for decision-making, processes can be optimised and employees can be empowered.
Another advantage is the ease of implementation. As Peakboard can be used without a complex infrastructure and thanks to its simple operation by specialist departments, projects can often be realised within a few days. This makes Peakboard particularly suitable for agile improvement projects or quick proof-of-concepts.
Typical areas of application are production lines with display of OEE, cycle times and order status, assembly stations with digital worker guidance, logistics areas with material flow visualisation or stock levels, quality management with error evaluation and maintenance with fault messages and machine data.
One practical example is Johannes Giesser Messerfabrik GmbH. Here, machine data is combined with SAP information and visualised directly in production. This reduces queries, saves time and supports employees in their daily work. Peakboard is also used at Merck Contract Logistics to replace physical shop floor boards with digital dashboards and bring more transparency to warehouse processes - together with technology partner Softing.
Peakboard consists of three central components: the free Peakboard Designer for creating dashboards, the Peakboard Box as a compact hardware solution for the industry and the BYOD option for operation on your own hardware or virtual machines. Thanks to partnerships, for example with Softing, even complex machine parks can be easily connected and data can be utilised efficiently.
To summarise: Peakboard brings data to where it is really needed - on the shop floor, in assembly, in the warehouse or in maintenance. The solution helps companies to make their processes more visible, efficient and responsive. It enables employees to make better decisions, act faster and continuously improve processes - without major IT projects, but with maximum practical benefits.
Products & services
Shopfloor Management
Particularly at the site of value creation, you can use digitalization to create new milestones in the continuous improvement process within your company. After all, standardized, digital visualization systems not only ensure a transparent exchange of information, they also make communication more efficient. With Peakboard, you can communicate real-time information from various data sources directly on a dashboard for managers and executives to see. This means that everyone knows the state of the process, uniformly, across all departments, and in real time, so important information is not lost anymore. Transparent system of key figures in production Often, key figures and analyses are arduously collected, printed, and handed out in the classically analog way. As a result, most of the information is already outdated before your staff even receives it. Peakboard gives you a simple and scalable solution that allows you to implement your digital shop floor management board in just a few easy steps. Link and communicate complex data between MES and ERP systems and IoT machine data – in real time! This way, you always have a clear overview of your operational processes. Create clear and concise monitoring of your key figures from production, such as OEE, downtimes, scrap rates or cycle times View key figures, daily targets, and progress in real time Use Peakboard Hub to store your data so you will be able to analyze and evaluate it afterwards
Interactive Worker Assistance
Inefficient assembly processes and frequent errors lead to production delays and quality problems. There is often a lack of clear guidance and support for workers to perform their tasks efficiently. Lack of visibility into the progress of assembly jobs makes it difficult to effectively manage production flow and identify bottlenecks early. Overcoming these challenges requires a worker assistance system that provides clear guidance, real-time feedback, and comprehensive monitoring of assembly processes. Peakboard’s interactive dashboard provides your workers with all the information and guidance they need to complete assembly jobs accurately and error-free. By combining descriptive texts, images, technical drawings and material lists, the assembly steps are visualized in a clear and understandable way. The system also records important parameters during the assembly process to enable real-time monitoring and evaluation. This includes, for example, recording the time required and counting the OK and NOK parts at the end of assembly. In addition, you can directly reorder the required materials in the internal warehouse logistics or, if necessary, report problems to production managers to reduce waiting times.
MES / PDA / MDA
In many production plants, manual production data acquisition (PDA) is often a time-consuming and error-prone process. There is often no clear and quick feedback on the quality of the products and the efficiency of the production lines. This leads to delays, increased scrap rates and difficulties in identifying and correcting errors in production. Production management and employees often struggle to identify problems in real time and make the necessary adjustments, which ultimately affects overall productivity and product quality. With Peakboard, you can overcome these issues and optimize your production processes with accurate, real-time data from your quality control. Our interactive application for manual production data acquisition (PDA) is an effective solution for your logistics or production. Employees in quality control can enter information on inspected items directly via a user-friendly touchscreen at the workstation or on a mobile tablet. After logging in, employees are taken directly to the overview. Here they can clock in, clock out and enter breaks. An overview of individual performance data is displayed on this screen, including machine running time and product comparison. In addition, the screen provides a clear overview of the current orders, which are processed one after the other. The reasons for rejects are recorded on the second screen. If an article is free of defects, this is confirmed by pressing the “OK” button. For items with quality problems, the defects can also be specified in detail. On the third screen, the application immediately shows you the quality of the items produced, both in real time and over a longer period of time. This information helps to quickly identify problems, such as a high number of defective parts, so that production processes can be optimized immediately.
Interactive Quality Contol
This solution serves as an interactive dashboard for manual operational data acquisition in quality control. Through a touchscreen display, workers can interact with the dashboard and make entries on the items inspected. If an item is without defects, the worker can log this by pressing the “OK” button. If an item is faulty, the error can be specified in more detail using the corresponding buttons. Based on this data, the dashboard provides your employees with an overview of their own and neighboring production lines. Thanks to the real-time visualization, they also see immediately if a certain error has become disproportionately frequent. This allows them to react quickly and optimize the corresponding production process immediately. All the data collected through the touchscreen is stored and persisted in a list in Peakboard Hub. This allows you to use the data not only for a real-time overview, but also for historical analysis. The long-term analysis can be performed either via this dashboard or using a BI tool such as Power BI, Tableau or Click. Download the template now for free and customize it to your individual needs or your company’s corporate design. For even easier usability, all scripts in this template were created using Peakboard Building Blocks, our low-code script editor.
Digital shopfloor meeting
Regular team meetings are the core principle of successful shop floor management, where team members can discuss the most important things in a concise format. This includes an overview of open tasks and who is responsible for them, a summary of the status of work progress, and conclusions about the further course forward. In addition, the team also checks relevant key production figures or disruptions that occur in the value-added process. The aim of a shop floor meeting is to minimize information gaps and make work processes more efficient. This also reduces the stress placed on the employees because they are not constantly “putting out fires.” Instead, you can act preventively. More transparency in your processes If a conventional whiteboard stands at the center of your weekly shop floor meeting, you are probably also struggling with outdated or lost information. Thanks to our low-code software, Peakboard Designer, you can set up a customized digital dashboard for your meeting in no time and keep an eye on all of your team’s tasks at all times. To get started even faster, you can use our ready-made template to create new tasks, assign them to individual employees, and change the processing status. Whether it’s a standard monitor or a touchscreen, you can interactively update your dashboard if a process changes. Best of all, the data is also written back to the pre-configured data sources, eliminating the need for duplicate maintenance. In addition, you have the option to display other dashboard views that show relevant production information, such as safety and quality indicators, downtimes, scrap rates, cycle times, or OEE values that you can discuss at your shop floor meeting.
Digital shift book
Did you know that the most process-critical time is the first 30 minutes after shift handover? With Peakboard, you can organize a smooth shift change, even in stressful times. On top of that, you digitize your time-consuming and error-ridden paper shift plans. The overview of all shifts and employees is often lost in the paper clutter. Changes in the analog shift book are complicated and slow, which can lead to communication problems and errors during shift handovers. Paper-based systems also carry the risk of important documents being lost or damaged. With Peakboard, you always have all relevant information stored and up-to-date to ensure safe operations. During or after a shift, employees can quickly and easily record the most important points on a screen, either via a touch function or using a mouse and keyboard. Other team members can also add comments to the messages to further simplify communication. The shifts, positions, categories of entries, and names of teammates can be customized directly in the central data management and communication platform, Peakboard Hub. The entries are reliably stored in Peakboard Hub – so nothing gets lost! Download this template for free to test the application directly. In addition to Peakboard Hub lists, you can also use SQL, Oracle, or ODBC as a data source.
Lean Management Board
The key factors in lean management are increasing operative performance and the ability to react flexibly and quickly to changes. This is how you establish and develop your competitiveness. With Peakboard, you can create more than “just” lean management boards. Whether in lean production or lean logistics, lean office, lean leadership, or lean manufacturing: Peakboard can access many different data sources and thus many different key figures, and also illuminate information such as error rates, wastage and labor utilization, simplifying your digital lean management and optimizing processes. Use Peakboard as a visualization and motivation system to include and lead your employees in KPIs and goals. This will help you achieve the greatest possible efficiency, clearly defined processes and procedures, clearly distributed responsibilities, logical communication paths, and transparency in your shop floor management. With Peakboard, you can provide even better support for your lean management with tactics like optimizing your processes through more transparency. This all-in-one hardware and software solution supports you in running effective visual management. Peakboard is a maximally flexible solution that can be implemented immediately in companies of any size and type. Many different KPIs from the areas of process efficiency, supply chain efficiency, business, or quality can be configured and visualized completely freely. With our software, the Peakboard Designer, you can integrate complex data from machines, plants, and source systems – in your corporate design, freehand, or with our templates. Simply select the desired data connection, create the visualization, and transfer it to the Peakboard Box. Your lean management board is ready! Whether on a standard monitor or a touch screen – using interactive buttons, you always have the opportunity to manually write back process changes in the source system, ensuring that your data is always up to date.
Peakboard BYOD - our low-code platform on your edge device
Peakboard BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) is a real game changer for anyone who works with Peakboard - or would like to do so in the future. For the first time, it is possible to utilise the full power of the Peakboard solution on your own hardware - flexibly, scalably and without any restrictions. Peakboard BYOD thus breaks with the previous paradigm that every visualisation has to run on a dedicated Peakboard box. Instead, companies can use their existing infrastructure - whether industrial PCs, virtual machines or panel PCs directly on the machine - and run the same dashboards there as on a box. This means maximum freedom: anyone already using their own hardware setup or relying on virtualisation saves additional investment in hardware. At the same time, everything that characterises Peakboard is retained: Real-time visualisation, interactivity, low-code dashboard design, flexible data connection and robust, decentralised operation. BYOD is not just an alternative to the Peakboard Box - it is the perfect complement for larger rollouts, for projects with special hardware requirements or for companies that prefer centralised management and automated deployment. Any customer who wants to drive forward their digitalisation quickly, flexibly and efficiently should consider Peakboard BYOD. It lowers the barrier to entry and increases scalability - with full control and proven Peakboard quality. It is the next logical step in the evolution of Peakboard - and the fastest way to take shopfloor digitalisation to the next level.
News
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