Many people are familiar with the phrase, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.” The same is true with the makeup of your workplace. If all your employees have the same general experiences, your shop will keep running in about the same way. If you want to…
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One of a job shop’s greatest resources is its customers. You may have heard that for most places, 20% of your customers provide 80% of the work. Couple that with the difficulty and expense of getting new customers, and it becomes obvious that keeping your customers happy is important. But what’s the best way to keep them happy? One of the…
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One of the greatest resources of any job shop is its employees. You wouldn’t be able to finish any jobs without them. So, just like any resource, you want to manage it well. Making sure your employees know what to do is the easy part. Employee performance management is the hard part. You may have a gut…
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If you’re considering ERP software, whether you’re looking to change vendors or buy your first system, it’s helpful to think about what it should do for your shop. What will make a particular ERP system a good fit for your job shop? The four points below are a great place to start. Helps You Get Your Job…
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Getting answers to your business questions doesn’t have to be hard. All you need is good ERP software. It can keep your shop organized and make finding information a breeze. If you’re using spreadsheets or not using software at all, you could make a dramatic difference in your shop just by implementing an ERP; slash the time and effort…
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Spring is often the time we start cleaning out homes and making them look nice. This spring, consider cleaning up your shop’s operations and making them more efficient. Below are four tips to help you. Track Important Data To make your shop more efficient, you have to determine how you’re going to measure that. Do you want to send out more…
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Data collection is often an unsung hero of ERP software, but it’s what we build everything else on. Putting good data into your ERP system means getting good information out. First Tool Corporation and Rapid Design Group both saw first-hand what data collection could do for their shops. First Tool Corporation First Tool Corporation has seen some great changes from data collection….
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The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) provides loans to businesses during the COVID-19 crisis to keep people employed. The government can forgive some of these loans, giving these small businesses a leg up during this unexpected, global event. Your shop may qualify for a PPP loan, even if you’ve already gotten one. Check out the PPP section of the SBA…
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This past year has been hard on small businesses. The Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council partnered with TechnoMetrica to survey small businesses and find out what impact software on the cloud had on their businesses. Their cloud software helped a large majority in various ways. The two biggest ways it helped them were by keeping their shops open…
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Virtual meetings have become huge over the past year, and they’re here to stay. Even after we can gather in groups again, customers may still opt for the convenience of a virtual meeting rather than an in-person meeting. This means you might be making your first impression through a computer screen rather than in person. Make…
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Things change quickly in job shops, and it’s important to make sure everyone can keep up. However, it’s hard to talk to people on the shop floor while social distancing. The more your shop is optimizing for things like profitability and meeting due dates, the more often you might need to communicate with the folks on the…
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While legacy ERP software is better than spreadsheets, it’s not nearly as good as ERP software that is still getting updated. As technology continues to advance, having unsupported ERP software means that your shop is falling behind. You could also lose some of the functionality that you already have. Far from helping your shop, legacy…
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2020 was a year of change, especially for manufacturing. Shutdowns and supply chain worries were a big part of the year, and shop owners were looking for ways to be more efficient. This past year, Shoptech’s top ten most popular blog posts were about improving shops and learning new things. 10. 3 Tips for Scheduling…
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If your shop is having scheduling problems, it’s common to assume that they are because of the scheduling department. That may be true sometimes, but there are many other reasons your scheduling department may be having trouble. Those reasons might come from different departments in your shop. Below are the four most common sources of concern for your scheduling department from other areas. Purchasing Sometimes, scheduling problems can come from purchasing….
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When you boil it down to essentials, a successful job shop sends out its jobs on time and makes money on every job. Getting to this point can be difficult, especially if your shop uses paper to track everything. It’s hard to know if you made money on a job if you don’t know how…
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On the surface, low volume, low-value RFQs from unfamiliar customers may seem like a waste of time for your machine shop. They’re too small to bring in as much profit as larger orders, and you don’t want to take time to figure out a quote for a new job. However, these jobs can be a…
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If you’re looking for a way to make your shop better, you’ve probably heard of ERP software. You’ve also probably heard that it helps with efficiency and that it helps get more jobs out on time. But that doesn’t really tell you what it is. It doesn’t have to be hard to get a straight…
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The Human Resources department in a job shop can often be overlooked. However, with all of the changes that 2020 has brought, it’s become more important than ever to handle employee changes smoothly and understand what employees are thinking about their jobs. If you want to keep your employees, get great new employees, and improve…
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In the US, most high school students are told they need to go to college to get a good career, but that isn’t always true. Trade school is an excellent way for students to begin a great career in manufacturing. A manufacturing career can take a person up the corporate ladder, let them grow their…
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If you haven’t yet reached the deduction limit for section 179, there are less than two months to make your purchases. You don’t want to leave money on the table. There have been a few changes to this section of tax law for 2020 to continue to help businesses. This article gives a quick overview…
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Safety is crucial in a machine shop. No one wants any injuries in the shop. Injured workers can also cost the shop money and time. Injured workers will have medical costs and admin costs for the shop to process the necessary paperwork. If an employee needs to take time off because of an injury, then…
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With social distancing in effect and travel cut down, more and more people are turning online to find what they need. That includes manufacturing customers. If you have a website, you may not have had many visitors to it before, but that has likely changed. Your shop’s website can be a way to convince people…
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When your shop is trying to hire qualified candidates that are also good employees, apprenticeships can be invaluable. In a recent survey done by Thomas, they found that shops with apprenticeship programs were less impacted by the lack of skilled labor. In addition, in companies they surveyed, more than half of their apprenticeship programs were…
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2020 has hit hard. As manufacturers reopen and continue to find ways to keep their employees safe and their machines running, efficiency and improvements become even more important. Technology can help any job shop become more efficient and keep it running. Below are three ways ERP software can assist a shop post-lockdown to run even…
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When your job shop is looking for potential employees, it can be hard to know what to tell people about your shop. Do you focus on the industries you work in? How many new machines you have? The answer, as it turns out, is at a more basic level than that. Industry Week did a…
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