---
title: "Overview: what IoTFlows does"
description: "What IoTFlows measures on a factory floor, what each of the five products attaches to, which product answers which question, and what you need before any of them show data."
category: "Start here"
source_url: "https://www.iotflows.com/docs/get-started/overview/"
---
# What IoTFlows does

Find the IoTFlows product that answers the question you arrived with.

IoTFlows attaches a sensor to a machine and turns what that sensor hears into numbers your plant can act on: how long the machine ran, why it stopped, how many parts it made. Five products build on that one signal. You do not have to adopt all five, and most plants start with one.

Everything lives inside an *organization*, the account that owns your machines, your people, and your data. One sign-in can belong to several organizations, and every number on every page belongs to exactly one.

## What the platform measures
What a sensor reads depends on which sensor it is. SenseAi reads vibration and acoustics. SenseAi Embedded reads vibration only. BeamTracker reads a laser beam that a passing part breaks.

Whichever sensor the machine has, it decides second by second whether the machine is running. The cloud turns that stream into uptime, downtime, and part counts.

*Uptime* is the share of scheduled time the machine was running. Every metric has one definition, in [Metrics reference](/docs/monitoring/metrics-reference/).

Nothing appears anywhere until a machine has a sensor reporting for it. An *asset* is one machine as IoTFlows tracks it, and a *node* is the sensor record paired to that asset. An asset with no node is a name on a list.

## The five products
![IoTFlows sensors beside screens showing the IoTFlows dashboard on a wall display, a laptop, a monitor, and a phone](/images/get-started/gs-overview-01.webp)

*The IoTFlows product family: the BeamTracker, SenseAi, and SenseAi Embedded sensors, and the dashboard they report into on a wall display, laptop, monitor, and phone.*

**Hardware** is what attaches to the machine. SenseAi mounts on the outside of a machine and reads vibration and acoustics. SenseAi Embedded is IP67 rated, so it is waterproof and dustproof, and it reads only vibration. BeamTracker counts parts with a laser beam across the part path. See [IoTFlows hardware](/docs/hardware/overview/).

**Machine monitoring** attaches to machines. It answers whether a machine is running right now, how much of the shift it ran, and where the stopped time went. See [Monitor machines and OEE](/docs/monitoring/overview/).

**Production** attaches to jobs and parts. It counts good and scrap parts against an operation, tracks cycle times, and schedules work across machines with Production Scheduler. See [Track and schedule production](/docs/production/overview/).

**Maintain** attaches to work orders. Requests, work orders, preventive schedules, and meters, with a work order openable straight from a downtime event. See [Plan and track maintenance](/docs/maintain/overview/).

**Inventory** attaches to stock. Parts and consumables, with quantities that move when a work order consumes them. See [Track inventory](/docs/inventory/overview/).

You do not need Production Scheduler if you only want to know whether machines are running. Uptime, utilization, and downtime come from the sensor alone.

## Which product answers which question
| I want to… | Product | Start here |
|---|---|---|
| Know whether a machine is running right now | Machine monitoring | [Monitor machines and OEE](/docs/monitoring/overview/) |
| Find out where my machine hours go | Machine monitoring | [Analyze downtime](/docs/monitoring/downtimes/) |
| Count good parts and scrap per job | Production | [Track and schedule production](/docs/production/overview/) |
| Sequence jobs across machines | Production | [Track and schedule production](/docs/production/overview/) |
| Plan maintenance and act on breakdowns | Maintain | [Plan and track maintenance](/docs/maintain/overview/) |
| Know what spare parts are on the shelf | Inventory | [Track inventory](/docs/inventory/overview/) |
| Decide which sensor fits a machine | Hardware | [IoTFlows hardware](/docs/hardware/overview/) |

## What you need to get started
1. Sensors for the machines you want to watch, one per machine.
2. A Wi-Fi network the sensors can join, or an IoTFlows 4G/LTE router where plant IT will not put devices on the facility network.
3. An organization, and someone in it who can add machines.

IoTFlows onboards the hardware for you. Sensors arrive registered to your organization and tied to their assets, so your first task is putting them on Wi-Fi, not registering them. Contact IoTFlows to tie your sensors to an asset. See [Contact support](/docs/get-started/get-support/).

## See also
- [Quickstart: see your first machine's data](/docs/get-started/quickstart/)
- [How sensors, the cloud, and the dashboard fit together](/docs/get-started/how-iotflows-works/)
- [IoTFlows hardware](/docs/hardware/overview/)
- [Monitor machines and OEE](/docs/monitoring/overview/)