– I’m Dave Hannah, I’m the president of G Zero CNC machine. Prior to purchasing ProShop, we were using JobBOSS ERP system. We had a lot of difficulties in maintaining a good schedule that would be accurate so we can forecast on our workload, be positive on when we’re gonna get our items to our customers, and we just constantly were fighting with that. And so that started us to search, to see what else was out there that can help us to meet our customer’s needs. We realized we’d had our previous ERP system for eight years and we still weren’t having any advance in improving in our scheduling, so we were having difficulties on seeing what this current status of each job was, where it was at, how soon we were gonna be finished with it, and it would just wasn’t as robust as what we needed for our system. So when I saw the demo, I was very impressed with the ability to track and see live real time where each job was, which status it was in each operation, where we were not able to follow before, it was more of just a system that we had was more current on beginning to end of a job, it wasn’t anything in between, it started, and then it was completed. I had no idea we ‘re falling behind in which operations and ProShop really was just amazing at how you can tell each operation its status, how far they were in that operation, we could see if they’re meeting their goals, if it’s falling behind, if we’re gonna need to work some overtime to catch up on jobs, it was just amazingly more robust than our current system we were using. The onboarding process for ProShop was actually very impressive. It was, they would work at any pace we wanted to, we were very aggressive and wanted to get it done right away. So they made all of the trainers available for us. We had one trainer in particular for the majority of our time, Luke, and he was fantastic to work with, very knowledgeable, understood our questions, knew where we were gonna be needing more information on, and really highlighted the importance of certain areas for us to really get implemented and get going with this program. From the beginning of the ProShop implementation, it was probably two months before we started cutting over and making job travelers into the shop and putting things, implementing it onto the floor. So it was rather quick, we were very excited to get that going and see the benefits that it was gonna have for our shop. We ended up getting rid of three different Excel spreadsheets that we were using. One that was enhancing our schedule from JobBOSS that we had to use, one for purchasing and then one for assembly items. So all those went away and now everything is done strictly paperless, right on the internet, so we can see live in each machine, and what we’re doing. From the first demonstration of ProShop, the scheduling is what really jumped out to us, that was what we were looking for, we needed something that we could rely on, so when we tell our customers what date we’re gonna have those parts to them was accurate, and we believed that and they could count on it. It’s been impressive at how easy ProShop is for me to look up issues with jobs, to see if we were profitable on a current job, are we bidding it right? So it’s taking it to where, before you’d have to gather a lot of paperwork, talk to the employee that ran the job to get information from them, and now it’s all at a click of a button right in front of me all day long. It’s anytime I have any questions or any concerns about a job, I can look the entire history up to how much material we purchased, to where it went out for outside processing, and any accessories, how much tooling do we have to buy for that job, any tools. So it’s really made it an easy system to look and see if we really did well on that job a little bit. So the visual work instructions have actually been great. We’re able to input pictures of setups, we can even do videos if we want to, we have one job in particular that only one employee made ’cause he knew all the setups and the procedures for it. And so now we have all those into the ProShop system, and so now anyone can make that job instead of just that one employee that was familiar with all those setups. Yeah we’ve noticed that with the better work instructions that we can put into ProShop has really reduced our setup times, it’s been a benefit to see, are we estimating our setups properly? So to the time we gave it to the time it actually took, the employee can put in information right into the system saying that we know we were off on our setup times because of X, Y, Z happened. So we can take that, we can analyze it and figure out, you know, what we’re doing wrong for future jobs, we need to add more setup time when we’re bidding these types of job, or if we’re really reducing our setup times and be able to be a little more competitive. ProShop has definitely helped us on improving what parts get into inspection, the IPC checks are amazing, it really keeps the employees focused on the job, to watching for any tight tolerance issues. You know, we can set them to any level we want. So we’re getting, making sure that they’re following up and we’re not producing bad parts. We’ve actually seen a reduction in our scrap rate on the shop floor, as far as how much, how many parts we’re losing in a production run. So we’re able to reduce that number and it’s been actually a considerable amount of money we’ve saved. Yes it’s amazing at how it has helped organize it. We’ve reduced our paper amount tremendously ’cause now you can click on a job, you can see the material certs, you can see the process certs, we can see anything we’ve purchased for it all from a click of a button, right from that specific job, or if we wanna look at the job history of how many times we’ve made that part, and see how much we were paying for a material back when we started compared to now, what increases have been there? So it’s very intuitive as far as us being able to look at a job and really break down what’s happened. Final inspection is much faster in ProShop. It gives us the ability ’cause we’re doing inspections prior to each operation, each operation has its own inspections that need to be done. And so we’re able to move the parts quicker to outside processing or to the customer. On-time delivery has been actually one of our exciting features that we’ve been able to improve on. Before like I said, with scheduling issues, it’s been difficult to meet the expectations that we had set and to follow up on really would be at the last minute that we would know something’s wrong. Now with ProShop and being able to see each job where it’s at the outside, or excuse me, our shipping receiving person can look and see what’s coming up and getting ready to go out, so we’re making sure we’re hitting our dates that we said. So the shipping or receiving will raise the question if something’s not queued up and ready for them. So it’s really has all of the personnel involved at what’s going on out on the shop floor, so we know we can get our parts and out to our customers on time. I’ve worked at several companies before owning my own company, and implementing a software program of any type is always difficult. You always get pushback and people who don’t like change, and really aren’t excited about something new. And the initial response was some grumbling, but once they saw the system, they were impressed with how much they had at their fingertips. They didn’t have to leave their work site, they can click see the print, click, see what inspection features they need to do. So really everybody embraced it very well and are happy with the program. Yeah, I was skeptical at first at their claim to being paperless. You hear that quite often, it’s a popular term, but I was actually very impressed at how paperless we are. We’ve actually got rid of our huge copier that we had for printing off all of our travelers and everything and that’s saved us money right there. It is truly a paperless system and really impressive. I was surprised at how easy it is to find information being paperless. So if I need a material cert, is very simple to click on it and find it instantly. So there was my apprehension to going away from that ’cause people like to hold things in their hand and see them, but with the system that we have, going paperless has been great. Yeah our set up metrics is one of the big things that we’ve seen improve. When we purchased the system and got it implemented, it tells you everything. We set up our, we put in our setup times and the employees are able to go in and make notes if there’s an issue with setup, and then we review those. And what we came to find out was that they were spending a lot of time looking for tools, always walking around looking for a tool. So we implemented the tool module and reduced our setup times dramatically. That has really been our biggest time-saver, and given us more capacity on our machines, as all of our tools are staged prior to, no one’s walking around the shop floor, looking for a tap that we say we have somewhere, this, you know, ProShop has the system to where, when they’re done with the job, they break it down and breaking it down means they take out the non-standard tools. So now those get returned to the tool crib, and so we always know where those special taps or the important end mills or drills are. We haven’t had the opportunity to show it to any customers. We’ve made the statements that we have it now, but we did have our first audit for AS9100, about four months ago, and the auditor was extremely impressed. He actually put ProShop in these writeup talking about it. He only actually went out to the shop floor twice, which is pretty rare, everything else we were showing him in ProShop, employees training schedules, where we keep our certs, how we monitor everything, how we control everything. So he was actually extremely impressed. At this point we haven’t used that out in the, as a sales tool so much, we are just now putting the ProShop logo onto our website. So potential customers can see that we’re using it, but I have a feeling that it’s going to be a great sales tool in the future. The way ProShop is set up, the smallest of companies can use it, to the largest of companies. It’s a very simple and, you know, we’re a small-size shop with 20 employees, and it’s just amazing product to have. Implementation on ProShop was rather quick, we got it done all of our training in about two months, but after about three months, everybody was fairly comfortable with what was going on, and I would say four to five months in, we were zinging right along and just loving every aspect of it. Within the first they have the basics down, the logging in, the clocking into jobs, the spreading your time across multiple operations, it’s very easy and intuitive today’s society, everybody’s a very computer savvy. So it makes it a little bit easier, but I would say within a month, they are perfectly trained and don’t have any issues. I would probably say scheduling, it really is the most powerful scheduling system I’ve ever seen. ProShop really has nailed it when it comes to what a shop really needs to know, what customers are gonna ask, and it’s really obvious that they knew what they were doing when they made the scheduling module. The more we get into other modules, they do way, like I said, the tool module was an amazing help for us. So I really could pick quite a few, but I would say the scheduling module was really what I couldn’t live without. Throughput I would say we easily are getting 20% more through the shop. We are really making an effort to see what benefits we’re getting, and what areas we’re improving on the most, you know, the setup procedure, us identifying the problems with tools not being ready and us implementing the tool module, really helped us quite a bit. And we use the NCR module constantly, everyone, no matter what creates an NCR, when they have a discrepancy on a part, whether it was included as a setup piece, we still put in the discrepancy so we can analyze what went wrong and what we can improve on. So whether it’s programming issues, setup issues, so we can continue with training so, but ProShop has been amazing in helping us with our increase our throughput on the shops. ProShop has definitely made us more profitable as far as a hard number I probably couldn’t come down with that at the moment. I just know that there’s more in my bank account every month. So that is a great feature. So, but it’s definitely, really helped us identify areas that we’re losing money. So I know we have increased tremendously, putting a number on it I couldn’t at this point, but it’s definitely been, it paid for itself many times over already. I really think if we would’ve had ProShop from day one, when I started this company, we would be much farther along, probably be a very much larger company at this point, just ’cause of its forecasting and its stability for the ease to see where our issues are, is what I really like about it. My previous ERP system, we spent eight years with it and it worked, it was, you know, had features that were nice, but just nowhere near the features of ProShop has for us, and we’re excited to see where it’s gonna take us. At this time, Return On Investment is definitely been a positive one, as far as a number, I don’t have one, I know it’s just been really shown us a lot of areas that we were lacking and helping us become a better shop and perform for our customer better. Really on an overall scheme, yes, ERP systems can be expensive. I’ve seen lots of very expensive systems out there, and it’s something that any shop really needs as far as what ProShop’s costs, and the result that we get is negligible. We really are, I do not mind paying for it. ProShop has definitely helped on the stress level, I’m always concerned, machine jobs have a mentality of, well, we’re always late, and that just has never sat well with me in my entire career. So I pride myself and we pride our company on getting things there to you on time. And ProShop really gives me a better comfort level in knowing where my schedule is at, how I’m performing for my customers, and what they’re gonna get. I think, you know, I’ve got many years before I want to retire, but I know the type of company that we’re gonna have in the next five years, just from ProShop is gonna be way beyond what I thought we would be at, and definitely is a great investment that will make our company worth more than other companies. I think the overall employee morale and understanding of where we’re at, has really changed, everything’s right at their fingertips to see from how much time we’ve assigned them for a setup, and where they can actually give feedback, if we’re quoting things wrong, bidding things wrong, seeing issues. So they’re really been able to let them be part of the team more so than just the ones that get the part done. They really can give us input into what’s going on. They really can help identify things by putting notes into the system for us to review later, the turnover from shift to shift is amazing, you know, so it really keeps people up to speed. It’s just been an amazing morale booster to know where they’re at. They know what’s there and what the dedicated time they had for it. It makes it kind of a competition for them to hit their numbers and get it done on time. So it’s definitely been a huge improvement for our shop. People say that I geek out a little bit too much on it, because I’m amazed at how much it can do, and what an amazing system it is. So I think love would be too light of a word. So we are definitely, we are very comfortable at knowing where our machine load is and how much more work we can take on. We’ve actually been able to take on more work in the recent months just ’cause we know, and we are comfortable with our schedule, and what we can put through the machines that we have on the floor. I think we definitely do. Unfortunately, that probably won’t be for long, because once everybody learns about ProShop, they’re gonna be right there with me, doing just as well. But right now, having ProShop over some of our other competitors are using other systems, we definitely have the advantage. We are very excited. We’ve seen some new customers come on board that have been very impressed with our ability to meet the schedule that we say we can meet. We’ve been able to input things into our process when they need a hot job and we can see what the impact will be and tell them whether or not we can get it out on time, and so I think this, the growth we’re seeing is just going to increase tremendously from using ProShop.