A New Shop + A New Partner = New Software Rod Gross took a gamble last year when he left an established position as a purchasing manager with GVM Incorporated to start his own business, Precision Cut Industries (PCI). In spite of that risk, Gross is now the president of a successful new fabrication shop, in part because he hedged his bets by heavily researching purchases, aligning himself with potent business allies, and implementing both common sense and cutting edge technology to make his business as efficient as possible. “There’s a risk for me to do what we’re doing, but I really believe that if I surround myself with the right people, there’s a market out there for what we’re doing and how we’re doing it,” Gross says. “We’re combining what a lot of people do into one business. We’re not that big yet, but we’re expanding very rapidly. In fact, we’ve acquired a few out of state customers already.” As he had planned, Gross’s shop uses its machinery to cut, form and weld just about anything which can be made from metal sheets and tubing. What he had not anticipated was that he would become an important player in the new development of an existing industrial software program. PCI’s role in the software development project was the final link in a chain of unexpected events that took place while Gross was laying the groundwork for his start up Instead of leasing space and equipment as he originally planned to do, Gross ended up starting from the ground up with a new building when he couldn’t find a lease space to accommodate his venture. His efforts to find and finance a suitable construction site for the shop led him to his first business ally, the York County Industrial Development Authority. The YCIDA helped Gross find the site for his business in the Penn Township Industrial Park, which they are developing jointly with the township. With the YCIDA’s help, Gross was not only able to find a building site, but also to construct a 10,000-square-foot facility for the business with the option to build up to 10,000 additional square feet when the need arises. Gross spent his free time during construction, looking at equipment, including lasers, water-jets, and press brakes for the new shop. With equipment decisions behind him, he turned to software, thoroughly researching all of the major manufacturing software providers. One way the former purchasing manager wanted to combine common sense and technology in his new business was by finding manufacturing software that would allow him to computerize every aspect of his operation under one umbrella program. Though the cost of many full-blown ERP or MES programs can be prohibitive for a new business, Gross was determined to have every function – from estimating through billing – managed by one system. He knew shop efficiency would affect his ability to compete profitably. He felt that shop management software would have to contribute heavily to promoting efficiency, both now and in the foreseeable future. Gross set some software objectives: * A functional shop management system to track jobs A means to provide profitability feedback Software that incorporated estimating through billing A responsive vendor Gross’ extensive research included visits to vendors’ offices and vendors’ customers, as well as downloading trial programs. “I reviewed at least 10 systems before choosing Visual EstiTrack from Henning Industrial Software,” he said. According to Gross, he was attracted to Henning’s system by its heavy reliance on intuitive, icon-based presentations. “The overall program flow is grounded in an understanding that comes from the company founders’ own industrial background.” That understanding of the manufacturing environment was one of several factors that convinced Gross. The options provided by the modular nature of the software, the flexibility the package provides, its overall ease of operation, and the fact that the software met his four criteria outlined above were other reasons Gross decided to buy the software. The enthusiasm and knowledge of Henning’s staff helped, too. Still, all of these factors were not enough to convince some of Gross’s colleagues. Who IS that company? Gross recalls several people asking: “Are you sure? The company is hardly known in the industry.” Gross’ decision prevailed, however. He had set out to find software that would be easy and intuitive to use; he wasn’t impressed by big names. “I was a startup company, looking at what best suited my needs. When I looked at Visual EstiTrack, I found it by far to be the most user friendly for what we would do. I know that’s a term that everybody uses, and I’m not a computer expert or anything, but in addition to being a powerful manufacturing tool, this system is very simplified and it’s very flexible.” A deciding factor in Gross’ choice was Henning’s plan to develop a set of accounting modules to complement the program’s many other optional modules, which include drag and drop scheduling, bar coding, remote time card/data collection, and a custom report writer. The modular nature of the system, Gross felt, provide the capability he needed to open his shop, as well as the ability to add to the system as his business grew. More importantly, development of the accounting package would provide all of the integrated functionality he was looking for at a very reasonable cost. Gross encouraged Henning to move its modules, promising that he and his staff would work closely with the company’s programmers. Through this close collaboration, Visual Books, the accounting component for Visual EstiTrack, was completed PCI was the first customer for Visual Books and has helped iron out the inevitable wrinkles found in early installations of any software. The primary PCI players in implementing and testing the software were the shop’s accountant and its office manager, Sharon – having a combined background in accounting and corporate finance of close to 40 years. “We’ve used Visual Books as it evolved within Visual EstiTrack, and everyone who has worked with it is pleased with what they’ve seen,” says Gross, readily admitting his own lack of accounting experience. For those areas, he points to his philosophy that the business can be only as strong as the people involved. “They’re very satisfied with it (Visual Books). When you develop a new product, there are bound to be bugs in it. What we’ve done is point out the problems we’ve seen and Henning has corrected them – usually the same day.” Previous Accounting Experience Gross worked previously with “a great accounting package – having a far greater price.” He feels that the features he now has in Visual Books closely match his earlier system. “I think they have an outstanding product – and a good price.” Because of his desire for a single system that tied together all shop, administrative, and management functions, during his software review process, Gross was adamant about the need for a closely accounting package. He understands now the technical feature he sought was an integrated database. There’s a difference. When two packages are ‘integrated’ via an interface, it is likely to require separate actions in either or both systems to export or import the appropriate data. With an integrated database, the data exist in both programs simultaneously upon creation or collection. Gross’ desire for integrated accounting wasn’t the first such request Henning had heard. He was just the most recent of several customers who indicated a preference for such integration between their shop management and financial systems. In spite of Visual EstiTrack’s proven interfaces with popular off-the-shelf accounting programs, Gross “would not have purchased shop management software without such transparent integration.” Work on the accounting package went into high gear in November 1998, a month after PCI moved into its offices and installed Visual EstiTrack. During the next month before any production had begun, PCI and Henning had a good, uninterrupted opportunity to focus on the implementation of Visual Books. Because of the software’s modular design, “PCI was able to work on implementation a little at a time. Once a new section was available, we would use the modules and run reports as we went along.” Anything we found, even minor points, we passed along to the programming staff and they were reviewed immediately,” he said. Shops use only needed modules The application scales to meet changing customer requirements, Gross points out, in the same way as Visual EstiTrack. Gross feels many shops will appreciate the overall modularity of Henning’s design as a refreshing change. It gives a shop the option to begin with a subset of the application, using only those processes it needs, such as only one or two modules at a time to speed employee learning curves, until the customer or employee is ready to expand into other areas. Shops are not forced into using every system aspect; as they grow as a company, the other parts are available to exploit for improving those areas of their operation. Is it time to issue an invoice? Gross described the process of using Visual Books to access information from Visual EstiTrack for invoicing and accounts receivable. “You don’t have to retype any information,” Gross reiterates; “everything is available immediately – anywhere it will be used.” He prepares invoices by merely selecting the job’s shipment number from a list of shipments that have not been invoiced. “Type the shipment number and your invoice is created. That’s it. It creates the invoice automatically. Once that quotation is complete, everything flows through the system, dropping from one level to the next. It all begins with the price quote, goes to the sales order, and then to the shop order, which creates the routings. Next, when I close out the routing, I create my invoice from that same routing screen, by plugging in the sales order number. When I enter the quantity shipped, that creates the packing list. Everything flows continuously through the shop management and accounting portions of the system.” The key is the quote As Gross learned, that continuity is due to all of Henning’s modules sharing the same database. “Once the invoice is prepared, there’s nothing additional to do before posting invoices. The key is the quotation. There may be a few other numbers to type, but if you were thorough when preparing the quote, everything else is so simple that I think it eliminates a whole person doing paperwork,” Gross says. That kind of efficiency boost can be received from the core modules of Visual EstiTrack as well, according to Gross. One reason for that, and a reason he purchased the software, is “the degree of understanding the staff at Henning has for the manufacturing process.” “That’s one of the biggest things we looked for from a vendor. As a small, startup company, we need to be certain to have someone available to guide us,” he said. “The Henning people are enthusiastic about their products and they’re hands-on,” Gross says. “They give you satisfaction. I don’t know how else to say it. I’m very pleased. It makes a big difference that they truly understand manufacturing.” Gross felt that it was important that his software vendor understands the terminology he uses when speaking with them. “Their manufacturing experience can be seen in the product” – an experience he didn’t find in many other vendors during his evaluations. In fact, “it was an “altogether different story.” Sometimes, “it seemed as though I’d reached someone who was training – they couldn’t answer my questions; and often didn’t even get back to me in a day or two,” Gross recalls. Since Gross began using Visual EstiTrack, he continues to be impressed by the program’s functionality. The program’s features “help me in the day to day battle to improve operating efficiency, lower costs, and improve our own customer service – that brings it in line with our shop’s overall goals.” “Visual EstiTrack eliminates so many problems. Being a new company, we had to get used to how we wanted to do it (the paperwork flow) ourselves; I think it really streamlines the whole paperwork system. It eliminates a lot of potential for human error,” Gross said. The software’s drag and drop scheduling module works excellently for PCI, according to Gross. This is the functionality behind that underlies the reason he likes the system so much. Once he creates an estimate, it is so simple to create a sales order and a router, or shop order, directly from that estimate. “It’s been a very good system for my business,” he says. Using icons, Gross can schedule workcenters, monitor schedule load, and monitor employee work and vendor purchase orders. Gross takes iconic screen representations of operations and drags them onto iconic representations of machines. “It’s an intuitive way of thinking about the operation that’s to be performed on the plant floor,” he points out. Then, once it’s on the machine or workcenter, “it’s a simple matter to change the sequence of jobs on that workcenter.” This screen helps shop personnel better visualize their manufacturing facility. Similarly for subcontracted operations – outside services also appear as icons on the Visual Shop Floor. Does the job require heat treating? Drag it over and drop it on the appropriate icon representing that outside vendor. Visual EstiTrack understands that a purchase order must be generated for that service or material. Purchasing finds a completed purchase order and simply must make any last minute changes or adjustments, if any, before releasing it to the vendor. Both Visual Books and Visual EstiTrack exploit this drag and drop feature using iconic representations of real world objects. Executing a series of drags and drops with his on-screen icons, Gross creates a shop order, automatically schedules the job, or prepares an invoice. Creating an Estimate A job begins its travel through Precision when Gross creates the quote. He does this by combining the capability of Visual EstiTrack with that of his Trumpf nesting software. That software for the shop’s Trumpf laser machine takes information on material, cut quantities, sheet sizes, and part specifications, and determines how many sheets are needed by nesting the parts for maximum yield efficiency. It derives the total length of the tool path from the geometry of the drawings, and thus determines cycle time. That time is transferred to the seconds calculator in Visual EstiTrack and used along with material weight, and part quantity to create an estimate. “Using these two software packages to produce estimates makes my pricing consistent, no matter who I’m quoting. Accurate quoting is an important part of this business, and our software takes a lot of the guesswork out of it. When I quote a job and I say one minute and 48 seconds, and then time that job, it’s going to be within a couple seconds every time,” says Gross. Gross says he turns around his bids quickly once he receives a request for quote (RFQ). This helps him to meet another one of his business keys by providing the type of service he thinks his customers are looking for. Internally, the software improves efficiency by providing an intuitive interface, integrated databases, and simple electronic and hardcopy document creation and posting capability. This is where Gross believes his shop management system has the greatest direct impact on his customer service. “Since I can create sales orders and shop orders in seconds with Visual EstiTrack, it makes us more efficient, allowing us to turn jobs around faster. Once everything’s in the system, that’s it – for a repeat order, we just go in and make a quick change in the computer. After the first time a job’s completed, it’s really quite simple. You can use that quotation over and over, which I’ve done already with repeat jobs,” he said. To reuse an estimate for a repeat job, Gross uses the part number to look up the estimate in the database, selects the old estimate, and the system creates a new sales order and shop order. “You don’t have to re-quote the job totally; more importantly, you don’t have to say, ‘What did I do the last time,’ or ‘Did I do that before,’ and go pull a drawing from your files. If I’ve done the job before, that’s it. Especially on repeat jobs, it’s outstanding,” Gross says enthusiastically. When PCI wins a bid and an order is received, Gross “merely clicks on the right mouse button, drags the estimate up to the sales order icon, and drops it there.” With that simple effort, he automatically creates a sales order. Alternately, Gross can select one line item in that sales order, and drag it up to the shop order icon to create a shop order. To schedule the job, he goes into Henning’s Drag and Drop scheduling module, where icons represent each workcenter. He drags the shop order to a workcenter icon and it is added automatically to the workcenter’s schedule. In addition to the optional scheduling module, Visual EstiTrack features a drag and drop system which provides the unique capability to create electronic documents through the process described above, as well as printing hard copies of those documents for internal or customer use. Bar coding to track jobs CI uses one Visual EstiTrack module to tracking job progress through the shop. When a router goes to the shop, machine operators use a bar code scanner to log the job onto their workcenter. When the job is finished, it is scanned again to indicate it is off of the workcenter’s schedule “There are many ways that a fab business is unlike a CNC center. Run times can’t always be obtained with bar coding,” but that’s a minor issue. Also, job-related efficiency reports often cannot be used because parts in varying quantities from various customers are nested on a single metal sheet. In those instances, true operating efficiency cannot be determined because all the parts on the sheet are bar coded onto and off of the workcenter at the same times. One report Gross uses is a schedule listing, showing the shop’s upcoming jobs. The report lets him compare incoming orders to jobs which have already been scheduled, listing them by machine, shop order number, customer, part number, and even material. With this information, he can quickly check with the machine programmer to see if new orders will fit onto sheets already scheduled for cutting. The ability to quickly obtain this knowledge often leads to more efficient part nesting, greatly accelerating the shop’s turn around time and cutting down on scrap material. “Suddenly, instead of needing another sheet, we can just place the parts on one that’s already scheduled,” Gross said. “Improving efficiency and getting feedback from the software can be done in different ways, which makes it easy for us to look at our results. Visual EstiTrack has ‘hundreds’ of reports already in the system. I haven’t even touched the surface of the reports yet. There are many things in the system that I already use, and many I don’t.” Precision makes extensive use of Visual EstiTrack’s bar code timekeeping features. Visual EstiTrack’s timekeeper function uses icons representative of an analog timeclock, complete with racks of time cards. This makes using the system more comfortable and familiar for shop employees. They use it to register their arrival and departure times. Throughout the day, the operators also scan in and out of jobs as they change workcenters or complete parts of jobs. This makes it possible for Gross to track the progress of workpieces throughout the shop. Bar coding also decreases the flow of paperwork following each set of parts through the shop. This simplifies and reduces administrative efforts to track multiple parts being made for multiple customers from material in a single sheet of metal. Summary All of Gross’s planning has gotten PCI off to a fast start. After eight weeks of operation, the shop was up to eight employees with plans to add two to three more. “Things are going well. A second shift has just started, and a third shift is expected by midsummer. If the business really gets going, another laser will probably be needed too,” Gross said. According to Gross, “I found a totally integrated system – that’s what I was looking for – from the quotation until the time it leaves the door. And if something was not shown on a routing or scheduling report that we needed, Henning people just made it happen for me,” he added. Without a computer expert on staff – someone who works exclusively with computers in the role of a MIS manager – the assistance Precision Cut Industries has received from their software vendor has been indispensable. However, Gross feels both companies have benefited from the new business alliance. “They’ve been just absolutely fantastic as far as what they’ve done with us. Any questions we have, we get answers on. They give us a lot of ideas, and I think we help them also by asking all these questions,” Gross suggested. “I’m excited about what Precision is doing and how we’re doing it. There’s a risk involved, but I believe there’s a market out there for what we’re doing and how we’re doing it. We’re combining what a lot of people do into one business. We’re not that big yet, but it’s coming rapidly,” Gross said after the shop had only been cutting for eight weeks. “What we did was use a lot common sense to put it all together. In fact, we already have out of state customers because we’re very efficient, we’re more cost effective, and we have the latest technology.” Precision Cut Industries, Inc. |
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