Hour-by-Hour Board Template: What Goes in Each Column

Most hour-by-hour boards have two columns, plan and actual, and that is why they do not tell you anything. You look at 9:00, you see 22 against 25, you shrug. The board has recorded a miss without explaining it or adding it up. An hour by hour board template that earns the wall space it takes has six columns, and the two that matter most are the two that usually get left off.

Here is the template, column by column, with the reason for each one.

The hour by hour board template, column by column

Draw it as a grid, one row per hour of the shift, and these columns left to right:

Hour. The clock hour, not "hour 1, hour 2." Write 6:00, 7:00, 8:00. Breaks and lunch get their own rows with a shorter plan, or you will spend every day explaining why 10:00 is red.

Plan. How many good parts this hour should produce. Not "should" in an optimistic sense, the number the cell is rated to make at normal pace with the crew it has today.

Actual. Good parts completed this hour. Good parts only. Scrap does not count, and rework does not count until it is reworked.

Cumulative gap. Running total of actual minus plan, shift to date. At 6:00 it equals the first hour's gap. At 7:00 it is the sum of both hours. This is the column that runs the meeting.

Reason code. When the hour misses, one code for why. Not a sentence, a code from a short list posted right next to the board.

Initials. Who wrote the row. Two letters.

Six columns, about 14 inches wide on a whiteboard. That is the whole template. If you would rather print it, the free hour-by-hour board has the six columns and a starter list of eight reason codes beside the grid. No email, no account.

Why cumulative gap matters more than the hourly number

A single hour 3 short is noise. A tool change ran long, someone went to the bathroom, the first part after lunch needed a re-touch. Nobody should react to a single hourly miss, and if your board makes people react to it, they will start rounding to avoid the conversation.

Six hours in a row each 3 short is 18 parts, and that is a decision. Can the shift recover it, do you need overtime, does the next cell need to know its feed is late. You cannot see that decision in the hourly column. You can only see it in the running total.

So the rule is: the hourly number gets written, the cumulative gap gets looked at. At 10:00, if cumulative is minus 8 and getting worse each hour, the supervisor acts. If it is minus 8 and flat since 7:00, it was a bad first hour and the cell is holding pace. Same number, completely different response, and only the trend tells you which.

One practical note: hand-adding a running total under pressure produces mistakes, and the mistakes drift optimistic. Have a second person check the cumulative column once a shift, usually at lunch.

The reason-code column everyone forgets

This is the column that turns the board from a scoreboard into a tool. Without it, the end-of-shift conversation is "we were 18 short" and everyone nods. With it, the conversation is "we were 18 short, 12 of that was code 4, waiting on material, all before 9:00."

Keep the list short. One 60-machine shop with 17 cells runs eight scrap reason codes and about the same number for hourly misses. More than ten and people stop reading the list and write "other." A workable starting set: machine down, tool change, waiting on material, waiting on inspection, changeover, short staffed, quality hold, other.

Only write a code when the hour misses plan. Green hours get nothing in that column. And put the list on the board itself, taped beside the grid, because a code list in a binder is a code list nobody uses.

After two weeks, tally the codes. The top two will account for most of the gap, and now you have a 3C worth writing instead of a vague feeling that the cell is slow.

How to set plan when takt varies

The board breaks when plan is a single number written at the top for the whole shift. Real cells run three different part numbers in a day, at three different cycle times, and a flat plan makes the morning look bad and the afternoon look great for no reason.

Set plan per row. If the 6:00 hour runs part A at 90 seconds a piece, plan is 40. If 9:00 switches to part B at 3 minutes a piece, plan drops to 20, and the changeover row gets a plan of maybe 10. Write these in before the shift starts, ideally the night before, by whoever builds the schedule. It takes five minutes and it is the difference between a board people believe and one they argue with.

If you run configured or mixed assemblies where "one unit" is not a fixed amount of work, plan in standard hours or a weighted count instead of pieces. Rough weights are fine. A board that is roughly right and trusted beats one that is precisely wrong and ignored.

Where paper is fine and where it strains

For a single cell on one shift, a laminated grid and a dry-erase marker is the right tool. Draw the six columns, tape the code list next to it, wipe it at the end of the day. Do not overbuild this.

Where paper strains is the cumulative math and the history. The running total gets hand-added ten or twelve times a day, and last week's reason codes are gone the minute someone wipes the board, which is exactly when you wanted to tally them.

If you want to see the cumulative gap add itself up as each hour's actual goes in, the demo runs on sample data, no signup needed: Try the live demo →