JC Precision Milling

JC Precision Milling is a precision CNC shop that’s been open since 1979, and they’ve been working hard to make their customers happy since then. They won Manufacturer of the Year from the Rockford Illinois Chamber of Commerce in 2019, but they knew that if they worked on their shop a bit more, they could get even better. So, in March 2020, they started looking for a new ERP system, and they found E2 SHOP. Almost as soon as they found E2 SHOP, Amy August, Senior Administrator and Demand Chain Manager, knew that was the system she wanted. As she said, “I’m a hard one to impress and within 5-10 minutes of the overall presentation of what E2 can do, I was looking at Rob [the owner] like, ‘Please, can we get this?’ Just because it’s just such a time-saver and built to do what we need it to do.”

They had been using JobBoss previously, but it was not meeting their shop’s or their customers’ needs. As Amy said, “Part of that was because we didn’t have a very good scheduling program. We actually didn’t have any at all. And so, it was very difficult to make sure we knew what was going on with a system that didn’t give us that information.” Their scheduling problems impacted almost the whole shop. They didn’t have the data to accurately estimate how long a job would take, it was hard to find jobs on the shop floor, and difficult to make sure everyone was working and that no one was waiting for a job to come to them. All of these issues also meant that they weren’t always sending their jobs out on time. They knew they did not want to run a shop like this, so that is why they started looking for better software.

Once Amy got E2 SHOP, she wasted no time in implementing it. As she said, “It was probably about 2 weeks before we were fully, fully, 100% integrated into the system.” Most shops take around 30-60 days to get fully implemented, but Amy did not have the time, so she made it happen sooner.

After they started using E2 SHOP on the cloud, they saw their on-time delivery improve dramatically. As Amy said, “We were running 40-50% and now we’re up to over 75-80% right now.” Their customers have loved this improvement. Amy shared, “It’s nice to hear from our customers how happy they are that we’re actually making sure that their jobs are getting done early, and we can track where they are within the whole shop, you know, just with a few clicks of a button instead of having to run out there and try to locate everything.”

Being able to run a reliable schedule in E2 SHOP has helped their shop in many different ways. For example, JC Precision Milling found out that they didn’t need all of their departments running at the same time. They have some departments working 4 days a week and others 5 days a week and that has greatly helped in moving jobs through the shop.

Before they started using E2 SHOP, they couldn’t see what was really happening on the shop floor, so they didn’t know they needed to make that change. As Amy shared, “Everybody was working and then we weren’t able to really see what the capacity was. It was all kind of like ‘How many jobs do you have? Are they busy?’ Now we’re able to see the laser is at 60% capacity and the Brother machines are at 200% capacity so that gave us the information that we needed to make a decision on what hours that we need to be open.” Having this information also lets them know if they need to move someone from one department to another to help jobs move through the shop more smoothly.

E2 SHOP has also made Amy’s life much easier. As she said, “I don’t have to manually do that schedule, so I’m at the front making sure the quotes are getting done, and the orders are getting entered and the material’s being ordered instead of running around the shop for two hours trying to find things every day.” Amy estimates that she saves about 15-20% of the time she used to spend tracking down jobs and other information by using E2 SHOP. That means she can spend more time and effort on inputting quotes, looking for new customers, or whatever else needs to be done around the shop. She also likes that, since E2 SHOP is on the cloud, that she can use it at home. If she needs to check anything after hours, she can get online and log in. Amy can’t imagine trying to run their shop without E2 SHOP. As she said, “We’d probably just go back to doing everything by hand.”

E2 SHOP, on the cloud, has helped JC Precision Milling improve their shop so much, but they’re not done yet. They have plans to fully digitize their inventory and track it through E2 SHOP. They’re aware that this will be a big project, but, as Amy said, “We wouldn’t be doing it if it wasn’t for E2.” They know that E2 SHOP can provide an accurate inventory once they get everything entered, and that making changes as the inventory changes will be a snap. It’s just one more way that JC Precision Milling is working to make their shop even better.