Barcode Shot Clock — The Ring Countdown Timer

What Is the Shot Clock?

Some shop floor work isn't open-ended — it's the same short operation, repeated many times, where every one is expected to take about the same amount of time. Drilling a batch of holes, packing a run of kits, deburring a stack of parts. For work like this, an ordinary job timer that just counts up tells you how long something took only after it's already over. The shot clock tells you while it's still happening.

When an employee scans their badge, a project, and a task that's been configured for it, a ring-shaped countdown timer appears next to the scan box and starts counting down immediately — green at first, changing color as time runs out and then keeps running past it. It sits right there on the scan screen, impossible to miss, giving the person doing the work (or anyone glancing at the station) an instant read on whether this particular repetition is on pace.

How the Ring Changes Color

The ring moves through four states, always in the same order, and it never skips backward. Once time starts running out, the only way to reset it is to stop or clear the scan — it doesn't quietly turn green again on its own.

In plain terms: the ring is green for the entire time the task was budgeted to take. The moment that budgeted time runs out, it flips to yellow — this is a grace zone, letting a normal, small variance pass without alarm. If the overrun keeps growing and passes roughly a tenth of the original allotted time, the ring turns solid red. If it keeps going and passes about half of the original allotted time, the ring starts flashing red — a state that's hard to miss from across the room, meant for a shot that has clearly gone sideways and probably needs a second set of eyes.

Here's what each state actually looks like on the scan screen:

Green — still counting down, well within the allotted time.

Yellow — the timer has gone negative. The allotted time has just been used up.

Red — the overrun has grown past the early grace window.

Setting Up a Task for the Shot Clock

The shot clock is configured entirely on the Project task itself, in the Qty group of its Properties panel. Three fields control it:

• Qty — the total number of units this task is expected to produce (parts, kits, cycles — whatever "one unit" means for this task).
• Qty built — how many units have already been completed. This updates automatically as work against the task is logged, so it always reflects real progress rather than a number someone has to remember to type in.
• Unit duration — how long one unit is expected to take.

Both Qty and Unit duration have to be set for the shot clock to turn on for a task — they're two independent, deliberate settings, and leaving either one at its default (0) keeps the feature off entirely. There's no separate on/off switch to remember; filling in both fields is what turns it on.

How the Countdown Length Is Calculated

Every time a shot clock starts, its starting length is worked out from those same three fields, in two steps: first figure out how many units are actually left to build, then multiply that by how long one unit takes.

Using that example — a "Deburr Housing" task with Qty 50, Qty built 32, and a Unit duration of 3 minutes per unit — here's how the four ring states line up against the clock:

Because the countdown is always based on remaining units rather than the task's full original quantity, a shot clock that's stopped partway through and resumed later picks up counting down from what's actually left — not a fresh full-length timer every time the task is scanned again.

Where the Shot Clock Belongs

The shot clock is built for a very specific setup: a single-user scanning station positioned close to the work it's timing — mounted on the wall above a workbench, clipped to a machine, or sitting on a cart right next to where the parts are actually being handled. The person doing the work can glance up mid-task and immediately see whether they're ahead, on pace, or falling behind, without breaking stride to check anything else.

That's a different setup than a shared kiosk that several employees rotate through over the course of a shift. A shot clock that's still running and visible to whoever walks up next isn't useful to them — it's someone else's countdown for someone else's task. Deploy the shot clock where the ring, the work, and the one person timing it are all in the same few feet of each other.

Making the Shot Clock Go Away

The scan screen normally clears itself after 60 seconds of inactivity — but the shot clock ring is a deliberate exception to that. It keeps running, and keeps being visible, straight through the automatic timeout. The only two scans that dismiss it are STOP and CLEAR. Scanning your username and then STOP ends the timer for that task and the ring disappears with it.

This is exactly why the single-user placement above matters so much: on a personal, dedicated station, there's no handoff to worry about and the ring behaving persistently is simply useful. On a shared station, it just means one more scan — CLEAR — belongs at the end of your turn.

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