User Guide

How Novus works, a part at a time — one picture for each, and the words you’ll meet on screen.

What Novus reads, and where it goes

On the left, the kinds of data a business keeps. On the right, the pages in Novus Metrics that read them — Review’s areas, Monitor and Studio. Below, the six Analyze tools and the data each one needs. Hover anything to light its lines.

  • Sales, deliveries and returns

    • by the day — what was sold, delivered or sent back, where
    • the same, with the time of day

  • Items and locations

    • your items — prices, costs, shelf life, pack sizes
    • your locations — routes, chains, delivery days, where they are
    • the materials you buy to make things

  • Limits

    • what a line, truck, crew or place can handle

  • Orders promised

    • what customers are waiting for, and when it's due

  • Recipes

    • what goes into each item

  • Stock on hand

    • what's in each store room, counted

  • Purchase orders

    • what's ordered from suppliers, and when it's due

  • Work done

    • each step's start and finish, case by case — orders, tickets, jobs

  • Machine logs

    • when each machine ran or stopped, and what it made

  • Readings

    • checks and sensor readings, with when each was taken

  • ReviewDemand & Supply

    • Forecast · what each place will want, by day
    • Forecast accuracy · a kept forecast against what happened
    • Stock · Delivery plans · what to send each place each day
    • Stock · Delivery plan accuracy · a plan against the month, or another plan
    • Stock · Materials · what to buy, and when
    • Stock · Production · when to start, the plant's limit, can we take this order
    • Stock · Network · stock points, where to hold stock, the warehouse, limits
    • Stock · What if… · the levers, tried before they're pulled
    • Staff · people needed each hour

  • ReviewRoute & Location

    • Route & Location · routes, and where to be

  • ReviewBottleneck

    • Bottleneck · flow, lead time, what holds it

  • ReviewEquipment

    • Equipment · Maintain · OEE, the six losses, when to service

  • ReviewQuality

    • Quality · first-pass yield, rejects, against spec

  • MonitorMonitor

    • Signals · each measure against its usual range (Actual only)
    • Studio vs actual · the simulated floor against the real one

  • Project PageStudio

    • Studio · the floor's measured step times

What each Analyze tool reads

━ needs it · ┄reads it when it’s there. Hover a card to light its arrows. Recipes, on hand and purchase orders are read on a materials plan’s Analyze (This plan).

  • Sales and deliveries

  • Items

  • Locations

  • Limits

  • Orders promised

  • Recipes

  • Stock on hand

  • Purchase orders

  • Work done

  • Needs Sales and deliveries

    Manifest Records

    every row, file by file; items' and places' details; on a materials plan, classes and gaps

  • Needs Sales and deliveries

    Strata Distributions

    any measure by weekday, payday, month, place or item; on a materials plan, what each item's use comes from

  • Needs Sales and deliveries

    Monarch Money

    sales, margin, waste and sold-out cost; on a materials plan, spend by supplier and each item's materials cost

  • Needs Work done

    Current Flow

    each case through the steps — waits, hand-offs, what's sent back

  • Needs Locations

    Terrain Map

    every place on the map, sized by what it moved, with each route's loop (needs Latitude and Longitude)

  • Needs Limits

    Ballast Load

    each limit against what it carried and what plans and orders will ask of it

Words you’ll see

Guided · Technical
Two ways in. Guided: tell Novus what you want and it builds it with you. Technical: Studio, Operations and Analytics, built by hand. Either can do what the other does.
Studio
Floors: where the work happens, drawn as steps. Run them to see where work waits; try a change before you make it.
Operations · Review, Monitor, Log
Review judges after the fact (did the plan hold?). Monitor watches as it happens (has something shifted?). Log keeps what was recorded.
Analytics
Pages built on the project's files, with the core tools: what sold, what came back, where the money goes.
Actual · Synthetic · Simulation
Where data came from: recorded, made from a description, or run in Studio. Every figure says which, and only Actual raises a signal.
Signal
A measured reading outside its usual range — the baseline, set from readings you choose.
Projection
A result worked out from data, and labelled with which: “from Actual data”, “from Synthetic data”.
Presentations
Reviews to hand to someone: summary first, a page per question, the method and assumptions at the back. PowerPoint, PDF or a spreadsheet.

See all three on one business in the working demo. Inside the app, every ? beside a figure says what it means.