Have you ever had drawings get lost and had to print them again? Ever have parts cut out of the wrong material because something got lost in translation? Customer updates a part but you still make the old revision? While there is not a perfect solution for all of these issues, at VMF we needed to do something about them. We needed a way to get purchase orders processed faster and more information to the shop floor. Going paperless was part of that solution. We were printing on average 5,000 papers a month, now we print 0.Â
Before we could go 100% paperless we needed a system that could manage it all. This is where Jobboss came in. Jobboss is a manufacturing shop management software. It handles everything from quotes, sales orders, purchase orders, material management, inventory management, customer information, drawings, employees time, and more. From the time a customer places a PO to producing the part through the shop, all information is in Jobboss. Even the drawings, solid models, and dxf flat patterns are all linked in jobboss so they can be easily accessed anywhere through out the shop. No more searching for files or misplacing files, all files are in Jobboss.Â
The second hurdle we had to cross was now that everything was going digital, how do we get this information to the hands of the departments producing the parts. We had to buy some hardware. As you walk through our shop you will see computers everywhere. Everyone has access to a computer where all the information is in Jobboss. Through Jobboss, everyone can pull up the job they are working on and attached to that job is all the drawings, solid models, and dxf files needed to make the part. All attached files can be opened through Jobboss. All together we had to purchase 25 computers to make sure information was every accessible.
We also knew that we wanted a way for the shop floor to open up solid models. This way if a drawing was missing information they would have the ability to get that information right away instead of waiting on someone to answer them. All our computers have Edrawings installed on them. This is a simple but powerful solid model viewer that also allows the user to dimension the part/assembly. Edrawings will open up solid models right from Jobboss. Edrawings allows us to put more information to the shop floor so things get made right the first time.Â
This has all enabled us to do $6 million annual revenue with one account manager handling all our quotes and one person taking care of processing all purchase orders. Going paperless will allow us to grow every year while keeping the office staff at a minimum.Â
