How to Grow the Business with Real-Time Job Status Data

A major obstacle to growing a business is how to deal with the increased paperwork generated by growing the business. Take the simple example of a customer calling to check in on an order. How does your business respond: Do you tell them you’ll call them back, open up a spreadsheet, then check up with three different people to figure out a rough ETA?

This is a common situation. As machine shops grow, the number and variety of jobs they take also grows, which makes it impossible to keep track of jobs without support systems in place. Accounting apps and spreadsheets can only do so much, as the information needed can be hidden in Byzantine filing systems that make quick access near impossible. Furthermore, not all information is written down, as floor managers and machinists may keep tabs on progress without marking it down or only marking it down on documents that don’t leave their workstations.

“These manual processes can hamstring a business,” says ECI Manufacturing Sales Consultant Cris Crismon. “If I can’t see the numbers, I can’t effectively manage my business.” Data visibility – the ease with which a shop can access information – is key to efficiently managing a shop, Crismon says. “When a customer rings you up asking questions about a job, that information should be a couple of clicks away.”

It is not enough for someone in your shop to know pertinent information about a given job. Everyone must have access to data for a shop to make informed decisions. This is why ECI developed M1 – an ERP system designed with data visibility in mind.

Introduction to Data Visibility

By data visibility, Crismon means the access people in both the front office and shop floor have to information in the ERP system. M1 makes information easily accessible through dashboards. “Within the ERP system, there are hundreds of tables of data being collected about everything from material stock to accounting,” Crismon says. “The beautiful thing about M1 is we have tools built in that allow you to quickly access and manipulate data.” Maybe an owner, for example, wants to see which jobs are behind schedule. With a quick search in the dashboard, M1 enables that owner to quickly see which jobs are behind, how far behind they are, and where the bottleneck is happening.

This is invaluable to any manufacturer, especially in times of supply chain troubles. Is the bottleneck owing to the time it takes to cut a part? The shop can look at time-saving measures and order cutting tools or other solutions from the dashboard. Is there a material shortage? M1 enables shops to compare prices and expected delivery times from different suppliers, then order material both to stock and to the specific job. Is some material already earmarked for a specific job? M1 clarifies how much stock is already set aside for other work.

Furthermore, the benefits of data visibility are not limited to management. By placing computers or monitors on the shop floor, the machinists can get up-to-date information on any changes made to an order. This reduces the likelihood of mistakes occurring because the machinist had an out-of-date printout, reducing scrap and improving the shop’s ability to pivot when changes are made.

On top of all this, having this visibility can improve a shop’s capacity. “When you go to a system like M1, you cut the time that’s eaten up by inefficiencies,” Crismon says. “You’re not redoing work because changes weren’t communicated. You’re not sitting on jobs because you ran out of material stocks.” Instead, this system greases the wheels of the shop to eliminate small hiccups and keep them from dragging down the business.

Data Visibility In Action

But how does data visibility affect a shop in a real-world environment? A large manufacturing company in Chicago got to see this firsthand. Every morning began with an hour-long production meeting to set the expectations of the day. This meeting revolved around sheets of paper passed out to employees, as well as judicious use of scribbles on a whiteboard. With 250 people working at that facility, the meeting sheets were outdated roughly the moment the meeting ended, if not earlier.

The handouts simply could not stay relevant in the ever-changing environment of a manufacturing facility in production. Even if there were no outside forces throwing the floor into chaos, with so many workers someone is liable to forget something, and those small slips of the mind added up. By the time the company contacted ECI, the daily production meeting was essentially for putting out yesterday’s fires, with little time left for addressing today’s needs. At times it seemed like workers were more productive if they waited to see what would go wrong instead of paying attention to what was discussed in the meeting.

Fast forward to today, and the facility is running much smoother. Screens at every work center display information such as assignments and job statuses with up-to-date information for everyone to see. On top of that, the dashboards at every workstation ensure that workers have easy access to this information and don’t have to rely on their memories or outdated work sheets. Now, the production meetings last 15 minutes, orders are updated in real time, and workers are no longer waiting to see what will go wrong to prepare for their day.

“By embracing data visibility, all of the communications problems in the shop were improved.”

“This is a really standard story,” says Crismon. “By embracing data visibility, all of the communications problems in the shop were improved. This made it easier to work together toward solving problems as they cropped up, and it improved the business as a whole.”

For more information, check out ecisolutions.com.