One of the biggest pain points at G-Zero was scheduling, Dave explained. “It was always very difficult to see where jobs were at, and we couldn’t tell if a setup was done, or how many parts were made. After getting ProShop up and running, our schedule started to improve right away. It was obvious to me what a game changer this was going to be. The fact that I could see every job detail right from my office, without having to go find and chase down a job folder was huge for me!”
One of the most impactful changes that ProShop helped with was improving job setups and helping get parts pushed through the shop faster. In their old system, all the job details, setup sheets, cutting tools, inspection plans, etc. were managed 100% manually outside of their ERP. “Like all shops, we did the best we could with those things, but it was always very difficult,” Dave shared. “Our setups nearly always went over our targets and that wreaked havoc with our schedule. But we didn’t have the tools with JobBOSS to make it better. Once we switched to ProShop, and our setup machinists could easily add notes about why the setups were taking so long, it became obvious that cutting tools was one of our biggest areas for improvement. When a setup would start, it was very common that the machinist would leave the workstation looking for the tools they needed, and the machines would sit.”
Dave had been shown the Tooling module in ProShop during the sales demo, but he initially thought that module was overkill and he didn’t plan on using it. Seeing the notes that his team was leaving about why jobs were taking so long, made him second guess his decision. “Once I saw now much tooling was a problem for us, we fully committed to implementing the Tool module in ProShop. We organized our tooling the way Luc had recommended and ProShop is designed for, and we even hired a full time tool crib manager – which was one of the best decisions I’ve made,” said Dave. “The whole situation got so much better than it was before. It took us about 2 months to overhaul our tooling area. We now kit jobs including tools, materials, gages and fixtures about 1 week in advance so we can be sure things are ready to go, and it gives us flexibility to make changes easily on what to run next. It’s now one of the most important modules to us in ProShop, and I would highly recommend for any company implementing ProShop, to make it a priority.”
“We also started using the Fixture module to manage our fixtures and storage locations. That’s now part of the job setup inside ProShop that we prep in our kitting process ahead of time. We now also have a lot of pictures of our setups, inspection plans, and operator instructions. It’s now so fast to add photos, that the guys complain if there aren’t enough photos. We’ve essentially eliminated tribal knowledge,” Dave explained proudly.
