Key takeaways
Andon (Japanese for a paper lantern) is a visual signal that an operator triggers when something goes wrong: a quality issue, a missing part, a machine fault. The classic form is a coloured light over the station, green for normal, yellow for a developing issue, red for a stop. The signal calls help to the exact spot, immediately.
The deeper purpose is cultural: it makes problems visible the moment they happen instead of letting them hide until the end of the shift. A workplace where Andons are pulled often and answered fast is healthier than one where the board is always green because nobody dares stop the line.
Problems are cheapest to fix at the instant they appear. A drifting setting caught in the first minute is a quick adjustment; the same drift discovered an hour later is a batch of scrap. Andon compresses the time between a problem appearing and someone competent responding, which is where most avoidable loss lives.
It also prevents the quiet workaround. Without a fast signal, operators improvise around problems, and the real cause never gets recorded or fixed. The piece on fault-to-fix covers turning that signal into a closed work order.
A physical light tower signals "there is a problem here." A digital Andon does that and captures the data around it: which station, what category, how long help took, and a permanent event log. That record turns Andon from a momentary alert into a source of improvement data, feeding the same downtime and reason analysis as the rest of your OEE picture. See downtime versus uptime for how those events are classified.
Fabrico turns problem signals into structured events: a stop or fault is captured automatically with its location and reason, an alert reaches the right person, and the event is logged for analysis alongside the line's OEE. That gives you the response speed of Andon plus the data trail to attack the most frequent signals at their source, and a captured issue can become a work order directly. Fabrico is built and hosted in the EU with data residency in mind and is ISO 27001 certified. To see real-time signaling on your lines, book a demo.
Teams putting this into practice often review our roundup of the best shop floor management software.
To turn this into a tool decision, see our overview of the best production monitoring systems.
The opposite. A pulled Andon means a problem was caught early, while it was still cheap to fix. A healthy line pulls Andons often and answers them fast; a board that is always green usually means problems are being hidden, not absent.
No committed response. If a signal does not reliably bring help within a defined time, operators learn it is pointless and stop using it. The response commitment matters more than the hardware.
A physical light signals that there is a problem. A digital Andon also captures the data around it (station, reason, response time, history), turning each signal into improvement data rather than just a momentary alert.
Andon signals are often the leading edge of availability and quality losses. Logging them with reasons feeds the same loss analysis that drives OEE, so the most frequent signals point straight at the biggest improvement opportunities.
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