Manufacturers don’t need more data, they need answers. That’s why Power BI dashboards, when properly designed and integrated with ERP data, are a game-changer.
In this blog, we highlight 10 real Power BI report examples that manufacturers are using today. These Power BI dashboard samples are built on ERP data, from systems like Infor ERP, and turn that information into actionable insights. Each report is designed to support a specific role, decision, or business process. Every example shown here is actively in use on shop floors and in executive meetings.
Report Description
This report tracks actual versus estimated labor hours by employee, part, or operation. It helps uncover inaccurate labor standards, process issues, or areas where employee performance may require further training or support.
How It’s Used
This report brings real-time visibility to productivity at the shop floor level, allowing users to interactively filter by employee or job. That makes the data highly actionable. When you see that one employee is consistently less efficient than others on the same task, it prompts important questions:
The report helps uncover those root causes—whether it’s underperformance, a skill gap, or even an inaccurate labor standard. The value lies in what you can do once the issue is exposed: coach the employee, update the routing, or fix the process. It’s not just a diagnostic tool—it’s a decision-making tool.
Report Description
This report compares the time employees spend on direct labor tasks with the total paid hours, allowing teams to see how efficiently labor resources are being used.
How It’s Used
This report compares the amount of time each employee spends on direct labor against their total paid hours, helping teams assess how efficiently their workforce is being used. The goal is to maximize time spent on direct labor while still allowing for normal breaks and downtime.
When an employee’s utilization drops, it raises flags about what’s getting in the way. Are they waiting on materials? Equipment? Another person? The report exposes that non-productive time and prompts follow-up questions like:
Understanding the cause of low utilization allows leaders to take corrective action and keep production moving efficiently.
Report Description
This report ensures that every labor transaction is reviewed and signed off by a supervisor. It flags any missing labor scans, quantity errors, or unusual entries that could otherwise go unnoticed.
How It’s Used
This report creates accountability by requiring supervisors to review and approve labor entries regularly. Timely and accurate labor reporting is essential—not just for calculating job costs correctly, but for understanding real-time shop floor status.
When supervisors validate time entries daily or weekly, it improves data integrity and directly impacts:
Without a structured process, labor reporting often becomes guesswork, where people are estimating their time instead of reporting factually. This report ensures time is captured accurately, reviewed consistently, and used to drive informed decisions.
Report Description
This report compares actual costs to estimated costs across materials, labor, and subcontracted services while jobs are still open. It identifies where overruns are happening and helps teams respond proactively.
How It’s Used
In a shop running dozens or hundreds of open work orders, it’s critical to know as early as possible when actual costs start drifting away from estimated costs. This report highlights those discrepancies in real time—whether it’s labor, materials, or subcontracting—so action can be taken before the job closes.
The sooner you know a job is going over budget, the sooner you can respond. But this report also flags the other extreme: jobs that are coming in well under budget. While that might seem like a win, it often signals an issue with costing standards or estimates. In either case, this report drives better margin control and improves how future jobs are quoted.
Report Description
This report shows all new customer orders booked during a selected timeframe. Results can be grouped by product, customer, or rep to analyze performance.
How It’s Used
This report shows new customer orders booked within a selected timeframe, broken out by product, customer, or rep. For manufacturers, bookings are the heartbeat of the business—they represent the demand that’s coming into the system.
By monitoring bookings in real time, leaders gain early insight into upcoming workload. This helps answer key questions:
It’s not just a sales tool—it’s a demand signal that informs planning and resource allocation across the business.
Report Description
This report visualizes shipped sales volume, total margin dollars, and margin percentage by product or customer. It brings together data from sales, operations, and costing.
How It’s Used
This report helps manufacturers connect shipping activity with financial performance. If a product has shipped, it’s going to be invoiced—so this report uses that trigger to analyze profitability at the order level.
Because the ERP system already knows the cost and the sales price, the report can instantly calculate:
This gives leadership a clear view of what’s actually making money. It supports better pricing, customer, and product mix decisions by showing not just what shipped, but how profitable each shipment was.
Report Description
This report measures whether shipments are arriving on time by comparing actual and promised ship dates. It can be configured to treat early shipments as on-time or not, depending on customer requirements.
How It’s Used
On-time delivery is a core manufacturing KPI, but it’s often difficult to track reliably. This report simplifies that by clearly showing which shipments were:
More importantly, it helps close the loop between delivery performance and internal processes. If OTD is poor, it doesn’t necessarily mean shipping dropped the ball—it often means production didn’t finish in time. That drives bigger questions:
Without a report like this, manufacturers have no way to measure whether they’re delivering what they promised. This turns delivery data into actionable insight for operations and customer service alike.
Report Description
This report analyzes all open orders and separates them into past-due versus upcoming buckets. Users can filter by customer, product line, or time horizon.
How It’s Used
This report gives manufacturers clear visibility into open orders—what’s scheduled, what’s past due, and what’s coming next. Having that visibility is critical for proactive planning. A manageable backlog is healthy, but if it starts to grow beyond expectations, it prompts key strategic questions:
While most ERP systems offer some backlog view, this report brings it together in a far more actionable and visual format. It helps teams move from reactive firefighting to forward-looking production planning.
Report Description
This dashboard combines labor efficiency (earned vs. actual hours) with utilization (direct labor vs. total time worked), giving a complete picture of labor productivity.
How It’s Used
This dashboard combines multiple labor views—estimated hours, actual direct and indirect hours, paid hours, and even break time—into one cohesive picture. It allows manufacturers to see not only how efficiently work is being performed but also how labor is being allocated and paid for.
It raises essential questions for shop floor leadership:
While similar in spirit to the cost variance report, this dashboard zeroes in on labor behavior and time usage. It gives teams a way to reconcile what was planned, what was executed, and what was actually paid—helping expose gaps in productivity and labor strategy.
Report Description
This report combines historical shipments and current backlog to forecast future revenue. It can incorporate forecasting logic from MPS or outside sources.
How It’s Used
This report helps executives assess whether future shipments and bookings will meet quarterly revenue goals. It combines:
It supports demand planning and helps guide decisions around overtime, hiring, or purchasing. When visibility into upcoming revenue is murky, this report brings clarity.
Each of these dashboards is already in use by real manufacturing teams. Whether the goal is operational efficiency, margin improvement, labor optimization, or better forecasting—Power BI delivers the right information to the right people at the right time.These reports are built on data already sitting in your ERP. The key is packaging that data in a way that helps people do their jobs better.If you're ready to turn your ERP data into better decisions, let's talk.