Key takeaways
Short answer: An andon light and an andon board are both visual-management tools, but they work at different scales. A light signals the state of one machine to whoever is nearby. A board aggregates many of those signals into one plant- or line-level view. The light triggers the immediate local fix; the board triggers supervision, escalation and the trend analysis that stops the same problem recurring. See also oee for manufacturing.
An andon light is the simplest expression of "make problems visible." Mounted on or above a station, it shows a small vocabulary of states — typically green (running), yellow (needs attention) and red (stopped) — to anyone in line of sight. It is the reflex of the system: something is wrong here, now, and the nearest person should respond.
An andon board is the brain to the light reflex. It collects the signals from many stations and renders them as one picture — which machines are down, which are starved, where the line is unbalanced. It serves the team leader and supervisor, not the operator at the machine, and it turns scattered events into a managed, measurable process.
An operator on station 4 hits a jam and pulls the andon — the light turns red. The team leader, three stations away, cannot see the light but sees station 4 flip red on the board, with a timer starting. If it is not cleared in four minutes, the board escalates to maintenance automatically. Later, the board history shows station 4 has gone red 23 times this week, averaging six minutes each — a pattern no single light could reveal. The light got help to the machine; the board got the problem permanently fixed.
A light without a board has no escalation, no accountability and no memory — problems get cleared but never analysed. A board without lights leaves operators with no immediate local signal and slows the first response. Together they cover the full loop: fast local action plus supervision, escalation and trend data.
Every andon event is a downtime or assistance record waiting to be used. Feed andon signals into an OEE system and "call for help" becomes a reason-coded Availability loss you can Pareto and reduce. The board is often the bridge: the same aggregation that drives the live view also populates the loss tree.
1. Lights with no board. No escalation, no trend, no accountability — the same jam recurs forever.
2. A board nobody owns. If no role owns the response, red just becomes wallpaper.
3. Andon events not logged. The richest downtime data on the floor evaporates at shift end.
4. Too many colours. Operators stop trusting a signal they cannot read at a glance.
A live OEE dashboard is a modern andon board — it aggregates machine state, times every stop and reason-codes it for analysis. Fabrico turns andon signals into Availability data and escalation you can manage. Book a demo to see live floor status and a downtime Pareto from your own machines.
It aggregates many andon signals into one view; a single light is one station. They are complementary, not the same thing.
Often yes — a live OEE dashboard is a modern, data-rich andon board with history and escalation built in.
Both: operators call for help, machines signal faults. The richest systems combine the two.
They should — each event is an Availability loss, and logging it turns the floor signal into improvement data.
Few enough to read instantly — green, yellow, red is the proven default; extra colours dilute the signal.
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