An order was ready to ship. One roll was missing from the system. Shredr found the root cause in 20 minutes.
The MES said the roll didn't exist. A hand-written SQL search agreed. Then FilmTECH asked their database six questions in plain English, found exactly where the data had broken, and corrected it. By hand it would have taken hours.
20 min
to root cause
6
plain-English questions
9
SQL queries, written by Shredr
0
SQL written by staff
Two rolls should have been ready to ship. The screen showed one.
Order 76623 was at the shipping stage. It called for two metallized rolls, FTR-641616 and FTR-641617. The second was sitting right where it should be. The first was nowhere in the software, as if it had never been made.
This is the kind of problem that holds up a shipment and eats a day. The team searched the MES inventory screens every way they knew. Then a colleague went underneath the application and searched the SQL database by hand. Both came back with the same answer: no such roll.
When the system of record and a manual database search both say a thing doesn't exist, the usual next step is to give up looking and re-make the roll, which costs a run and a delivery date.
Searched the MES inventory screens
Did not find the rollThe roll simply wasn't there. Not under the roll number, not anywhere the inventory screens could show it.
Searched the SQL backend by hand
Did not find the rollA colleague went underneath the MES and queried the database directly. Still nothing. The roll looked like it had never existed.
Asked Shredr in plain English
WorkedSix questions, twenty minutes, and the root cause. Nobody at FilmTECH wrote a line of SQL to get it.
Six questions. Twenty minutes. Here's the actual chat.
No query builder, no report request, no ticket to IT. Just the questions you'd ask a colleague who happens to have read every table in your MES.
Order 76623 Order issues
Real conversation · July 29
Give me all the information on this roll FTR-641616
I don't currently have any information available for roll FTR-641616. It isn't returning any matching records. Tell me whether it's expected to be an inventory roll, a slit roll, or a metallizing roll and I can search by alternate fields.
SELECT i.* FROM dbo.Inventory i WHERE i.FTRollNumber = 'FTR-641616'look in inventory table
I don't have any inventory information for roll FTR-641616. A direct lookup on FTRollNumber = 'FTR-641616' returned no records, and broader partial matches for '641616', including vendor roll number and item number, also returned no records.
641616
Still no matching inventory record. Searching for 641616 as a partial match in FT roll number, vendor roll number and FT item number returned 0 records.
look in the metlogs for roll ftr-641616
I found 1 metallizing log entry for FTR-641616.
- Machine 7, shift 4, operator 145, night shift of July 27
- Make ready 21:02, runtime 22:25 to 22:40, vented 22:47
- Roll weight 713 lbs in, 587 lbs out
look in the metlogs for roll ftr-641617
1 metallizing log entry for FTR-641617 as well. Same job, same machine, the shift before.
- Machine 7, shift 4, job 32073, earlier on July 27
- Roll weight 713 lbs in, 642 lbs out
Why is Roll FTR-641617 on Order 76623 but Roll FTR-641616 not there
Neither roll is formally linked to Order 76623. The order references both rolls only in a free-text comment, "ROLL#641616-641617", not through an actual inventory-to-order link. And FTR-641616 has no inventory record at all under that roll number.
SELECT i.FTRollNumber, oi.OrderID FROM dbo.Inventory i LEFT JOIN dbo.OrderItems oi ON oi.id = i.OrderItemID LEFT JOIN dbo.Orders o ON o.id = oi.OrderID WHERE i.FTRollNumber IN ('FTR-641617', 'FTR-641616')All six questions, in order. Shredr's answers are shortened here; the questions are exactly as they were typed. Behind each answer Shredr wrote and ran its own SQL against FilmTECH's live MES database, nine queries in total, none written by a person.
The roll existed. The record didn't.
Shredr pieced together what no single screen could show, because the evidence was scattered across tables that never get looked at together.
The roll was real
The metallizing log shows FTR-641616 ran on machine 7 during the night shift of July 27. Timestamps, weights, operator, all recorded.
But inventory had no record of it
The roll returned no inventory record at all. Anything reading from inventory, including the shipping view, found nothing. To that part of the MES, the roll did not exist.
And the order never really linked it
Order 76623 named both rolls only inside a free-text comment. The one roll that did carry an order item pointed at an item resolving to no order at all, which is why one looked fine and one looked lost.
This is why nobody could find it. The MES inventory screens can only show rolls that have inventory records. The shipping view can only show rolls linked to the order. FTR-641616 had neither, so every normal way in came up empty. The manual SQL search hit the same wall, because it looked in inventory, the one place the roll had never reached.
Shredr was not limited to those routes. It searched inventory, came up empty, then followed the trail into the metallizing logs where the roll's production history had been sitting all along. It then joined inventory, order items and orders in a single query to show that the link between the rolls and the order was a note in a comment field rather than a real allocation. That gave FilmTECH a specific thing to fix, and they corrected the database from there.
Minutes instead of hours.
We searched extensively for the inventory record in our system but were unable to find it. [A colleague] also checked the SQL backend and could not locate it. At that point, I used Shredr. [...]
Shredr identified the issue within minutes, pinpointing exactly where it existed in the system. The roll did not return an inventory record, which was the root cause. Once identified, we quickly corrected the database. What took only minutes with Shredr would have taken hours using the manual process.
Jeremy Lighty
Head of Innovation, FilmTECH Inc.
Asking the database has become routine.
18
people at FilmTECH querying their own database
4,200+
questions asked in 7 months
178
questions on their busiest single day
0
lines of SQL written to ask them
The missing roll made a good story, but the bigger story is the habit behind it. Eighteen people at FilmTECH have asked their manufacturing database questions in plain English, more than four thousand of them in seven months.
Jeremy is the heaviest user by a distance: over three and a half thousand questions across a hundred and eleven days, around twenty on a typical day and a hundred and seventy eight on his busiest. That is what it looks like when the answers in your MES become something anyone can go and get.
Every plant has a missing roll.
Maybe yours is a lot number that won't trace, an order that doesn't reconcile, or a count that's wrong and nobody knows why. The answer is almost always in your database. The problem is that getting it out requires the one person who knows the schema, and their time is spoken for. Shredr connects to the systems you already run, reads them safely, and gives everyone on the team a way to ask.
What's the question your database won't answer?
Bring it to a 30-minute demo. We'll show you how Shredr connects to your MES or ERP and answers it in plain English, with your workflow, not a canned demo. Pick a time below.
Scheduler not loading? Open it in a new tab.