Complete quote requests
A website form that takes drawings, quantities, material and due date, and lands in one place.
Who we help / Small manufacturers
Job shops, fabricators, machine shops, small plants
Small-shop systems, without a big ERP
This is home ground for us. We've spent decades improving factories. For a small shop, that usually means fewer things typed twice and fewer calls asking where an order is.
Where the week goes
- Quote requests missing the drawing, quantity or material
- "Where's my order?" calls and emails
- Purchase orders, invoices and packing slips typed from the same job
- Certificates of conformance built by hand
- A floor schedule that lives on a whiteboard, or in one person's head
Start with one
Most shops start with quote requests: a form on the website that collects everything you need the first time.
What we'd set up
One job record, everything filled in from it
Order status without the calls
Customers get an update when a job moves forward, or check a status page.
Paperwork from one record
Purchase orders, invoices, packing slips and certificates filled in from the same job.
A schedule everyone can see
The floor schedule on a screen in the shop, updated when plans change.
Tools connected
QuickBooks, shipping and payroll talking to each other, so nobody retypes a number.
What the shop knows, written down
Setups, checklists and how-tos in one place, so the shop doesn't stop when someone's out.
Engineers first
We're industrial engineers. We look at how a job moves through the shop before changing anything, and sometimes the best fix is a better process, not software. When a bigger question comes up, like a new line or more capacity, our team at Simulation Dynamics has modeled plants for decades.
What stays the same
- Your accounting and your part numbers
- How your floor works, unless you want it changed
- Your customers' drawings, kept private
Questions
What shop owners ask
Do we need an ERP?
Maybe not yet. Plenty of small shops do well on QuickBooks plus a few connected tools. We'll tell you honestly when you've outgrown that.
Can you work with our existing job software?
Usually. We connect to what you have and fill the gaps around it.
Do you only do software?
No. Layout, flow and scheduling are where we started. The walk-through looks at all of it.
Free walk-through
An hour with us, a list you keep
We come by, watch a normal hour of your day and ask where the time goes. You keep a written list of the three things most worth fixing, whether you hire us or not.
- No cost and no sales pitch
- A fixed price for anything you want us to build
- Small fixes first, so you see it pay off