Why Does the Workshop Need an Andon System?
A couple of days ago, I visited an electronics factory owned by a friend and noticed a highly visible electronic display board on their production line, showing the real-time status of each workstation—normal, abnormal, paused, and so on. My friend explained that this was their Andon system. Whenever an issue arises, an employee pulls the cord to raise an alarm, the board immediately flashes a red light, and the team leader rushes over to handle it. I found this quite impressive on the spot. After returning, I looked it up and discovered an open-source CLI tool also named Andon. Although it cannot directly connect to hardware, it helps manage task data, which I think is quite practical for friends involved in production management.
What Exactly Is Andon?
Simply put, Andon is a command-line version of a production status board. It allows you to quickly record, view, and handle various production abnormality tasks in the terminal—such as equipment failure at a workstation, shortage of raw materials, quality issues, and so on. Moreover, it supports JSON and CSV formats, so you can either manually type commands or use scripts to automatically collect data.
To be honest, I was amused when I first looked at its command list—there are only ten commands in total, and they are extremely straightforward: status to check status, add to add entries, list to display all, search to look up records, remove to delete by number, plus export to export data, stats to view statistics, config to modify settings, and help and version as well. It is basically ready to use out of the box. There is no need to learn complex APIs—it is incredibly friendly even for command-line beginners.
Installation Steps and the Pitfalls I Encountered
Installation is actually quite simple—just one command:
npx skills add https://github.com/bytesagain/ai-skills --skill andonHowever, when I first tried to install it, I failed because I forgot to install the Node.js environment first, and npx immediately threw an error. Later, I installed Node and ran it again, and everything went smoothly. So, if you ever encounter a situation where npx is not found, first check your Node version.
After installation, all operations are invoked through the scripts/script.sh script. For example, if you want to see how many tasks currently exist, you would run:
scripts/script.sh statusNote that you need to run this from within the skill's directory; otherwise, the script path will be incorrect.
Daily Usage Scenarios—A Few Examples
Scenario 1: Quickly recording an abnormality. Right after the production line starts, workstation No. 3 reports that a sensor is not responding. At this point, you can simply run the add command, enter the relevant information (such as workstation number, problem description, and time), and a record is saved. It takes just a few seconds—much faster than pulling out a notebook and writing it down.
Scenario 2: Searching historical records. In the afternoon, you need to review this week's quality issues. Use the search command with a keyword such as "sensor," and all related records will be listed. You can also use stats to see which type of abnormality occurs most frequently and which workstation is the most "troublesome." Let the data speak for itself—this makes it easier to formulate improvement measures.
Scenario 3: Exporting data. At the end of the month, when you need to write a report, simply use export to save the data to a file, then import it into Excel to create charts. I tried it, and the exported format is quite tidy—no need to manually clean the data, which saves a lot of effort.
Configuration and Customization
By default, Andon stores data in the ~/.andon/ directory. If you want to store the data elsewhere—for example, on a shared drive for team access—you can use the config command to set the ANDON_DIR environment variable. For instance:
export ANDON_DIR=/path/to/shared/andon
scripts/script.sh configThis way, all data is stored centrally, and team members can access it in the same manner, making collaboration much more convenient.
A Few Minor Complaints of Mine
To be honest, this tool is quite lightweight for personal use. However, for team collaboration, it is better to pair it with shared storage or a database, since it does not have built-in multi-user concurrency control. Additionally, the commands do not provide interactive input prompts—every time you use add, you have to pass parameters directly on the command line, which requires a bit more thought. That said, for those familiar with the CLI, this can actually be an advantage in terms of efficiency.
Overall, the Andon skill is especially suitable for small teams that need to quickly record and track production status, or for personal project management. It is not complex, but it wins on practicality—just like the Andon board on the workshop floor: simple, direct, and clear at a glance.
If you happen to be looking for this kind of lightweight task management tool, give it a try—you might find it surprisingly handy.
