Manufacturing companies need arguments in order to counter the increasing pressure to improve their factories and to help reduce costs. A plant delivers the best products through continuous efficiency increases. The most common approach to becoming more efficient is daily production floor management: managing the organization directly at the point of value creation. New technical possibilities of digitization scale the effects of production floor management immensely. The doubling of efficiency increases rates, more transparency and shorter response times are also typical effects. This white paper therefore shows which steps must be taken to introduce smart production floor management which is also the basis for a smart factory and the introduction of effective MES solutions.