Campbell Engineering Inc. Testimonial

– My name is Jay Campbell. I’m the president of Campbell Engineering. I think going on 23 years ago, I used to work for my dad’s shop down the street. And I managed that for about 20 some odd years and decided to break away and you know, do my own thing. It’s hard to say. I think Pam probably was the initiator. But then we were looking around and I think it was through the top shops. I was just had been following the top shops a couple of years ago and then saw something about ProShop and then kinda drew my interest. And then I started to let Pam know about it and she just kept digging and getting other testimonials or finding information and just validating, that it would be a good move to go from me to. So, yeah, quite for looking at history of parts, pricing cycle times, stuff like that, I’m still not, I couldn’t say for sure what’s… I’m still not using it to it’s, we as a company aren’t using it to its fullest, but me in particular, I there’s, you know, not that I’m letting the dust settle, but I’m kind of making sure everybody else has got, got it figured out. And then, I figure I’ll be able to, I’m spending more and more time on it now to drill into it for information. For sure, as far as this key, searching and stuff like that, it’s probably why I don’t use it all that much. It’s still, there’s a lot of, lot of pathways to get to certain information. And I think, I delegate a lot of the work that’s done, but I’m also kind of finding out through there, you know, the other people that work here, who um, finding out the ways through that they’re using to get to the information. I’m just kinda letting them find the way and kinda following their way. The most important thing is just the, I guess, the accuracy and the amount of information that it holds and keeps it all locked up in a, one location. It seemed like E2, we had to go a lotta different places to get all the various information where here it’s on the part level. It’s just, it seems like everything related to that parts. From drawings to photographs, to notes. And what we refer to as, tribal knowledge is we’re able to get it stuffing in that part level file, you know, and it’s, that’s to me the biggest thing, it’s just that tribal knowledge that, you know, it’s in a pulley of leaves, you know, he’s well, he ran that job before and, you know, I’ll, you know, he has all that information. Now we’re taking photos and documenting things a lot more than we ever could have hoped to with E2. I think that’s probably one of the stronger aspects of it is the way to just all the information you can put in it. On a paper system we used to write, write notes and all that tribal knowledge on drawings, and then we’d scan it. And some of them would get scanned some wouldn’t or, or we used to have paper files when we, we’d have these drawings in the, in a file folder, in a file cabinet. And a lot of times they’d be misfiled. Where are you– You just can’t, you just have to, you may as we’ll consider it lost. I mean, if you’ve got six file cabinets, it’s in there somewhere, well, you know, spend 20 hours finding it. So now it’s, everything’s retrievable. It’s all that, to me, that’s, that’s the most powerful thing. Yeah. As far as being paperless, so still excited to see what, there’s still probably a lot of real things that we, we’re not doing, but, know that’s the fun part, finding those out. We, we did a quality audit with one of our, probably our third largest account and they had their quality system or quality suit or people commence doing an audit and we showed them how we, what we do in Quick or E2. And they were just blown away. They just, they, they were like, wow, this is better than our system. And it just, I think they laughed and they go, they just felt so good about what we’re doing and far as the documentation traceability, it’s a medical company. So they wanted that traceability and they just, so in that regard, we just, you know, after they left, we just sat around and go. That was great, you know, because it’s, it’s a promising customer, it’s a, they’re, they’re growing. And it’s one of our key customers that we want to make sure we stay with and they stay with us. And it just really solidified that relationship. And that’s the truth that what’s truly happened. I mean, it was just pretty cool. Using ProShop is a marketing or sales tool. A few months ago, we had a customer come in or one of our larger customers, growing customers came in, they did a quality audit and they were just really impressed with the documentation and traceability that ProShop offers us. And they, they just were really impressed and they left here feeling really confident that we know what we’re doing. And I did, the whole team at Campbell we just, were so excited that it went as well as it did. We think ProShop was the key to that. I’ll continue to do it. And I’ve done, I’ve recommended it to at least six, seven other shops that I know about. And even my brother’s shop, as a matter of fact, I think they recently went to, another thing and another software, but I think they they’re gonna come over and check us out and see, see how we utilize ProShop. But yeah, of course I mean, everybody I talked to, I recommend it so. I think the first thing that comes to mind is just my ability to access ProShop remotely from, from my couch at home on a weekend where if I have something on my mind, which has always is, I could just flip up my laptop, log on and look at the schedule, see where jobs are at. I’ll do that a lot on the weekends, maybe on a Sunday before work starts on Monday, just kind of refresh where we’re at on things and kind of try to hit the ground running on Monday. Literally, you know, walk around the shop–

– [Interviewer] And look for it.

– Look for it physically and I’ll try to locate it then try to find an operator or someone in that I do think about it and start drilling down into it. In the past I’d have to walk out into the shop and look around the various machine tools. And quite often to be the last one I visit and to find out where the job is and then a lot of time there’s no documentation about it. And you know, I’d have to surmise myself, you know, where, where, where are we at on this? And a lot of times it’s just, it’s hard to find the answers. It’s per, you know, I don’t even have to get off out of my chair typically, but it’s it’s, as long as the guys are keeping up to date on their logins and stuff, it’s accurate to, you know, as if I were to walk out there. So that’s very helpful. Yeah. It’s I, I sit, sit more, but I walk, but I use my time more efficiently. I’m not, you know, just get exercise after work instead–

– [Interviewer] Certainly.

– If I can, you know. Ways of tracking things, we had, used spreadsheets a lot, Excel spreadsheets for tracking jobs, parts that are out outside processing had its own separate, you know, file listing type of thing. Yeah. Now it’s, it’s pretty much, it’s all in one. It’s, that’s the real beauty of it I think. We used to do all of our inspection on paper documents with various levels of issues with penmanship and legibility and, you know, it was, it was pretty rough. It was really, really rough not to mention the volumes of paper we do in process inspection and you know, some jobs we’d end up with 30 pages of, you know, in process documentation. Now it’s, there’s no papers. So the numbers are there, so that’s right, right? No, it’s it, it’s what we also like in the ProShop is where if a tolerance is out of spec, it’ll, it’ll alert you, it’ll be go to red, you know. And so, you know, obviously people see that it, you know, it’ll stop you in your tracks. That’s the idea. So you don’t make bad parts, but yeah, I would say that the ProShops built in inspection really helped us improve our quality quite a bit. I think the value comes from people being more efficient. You know, we’ll probably have to have fewer employees doing the same amount of work that, you know, and probably more efficiently and, you know, time is money and if you can, you know, save time, you’re saving money. We’re excited. We just liked the, the partnership or the feedback we get from you guys. The way you work with us is pretty amazing. I mean E2, it was non-existent. Um, so in that regard, that’s probably one of the highlights is just the, the way you guys work with us to help us out. The relationship with our customers and, and us, I mean, the same thing goes, you know, down the other way, your vendors and yourself, and, you know, it’s really makes a difference. The partnership we have with ProShop and Campbell is one of the key factors that we’re very happy with choosing ProShop. We have questions, we get answers right away and what more could you ask really.