Solid Industries Case Study

About Solid Industries

For nearly 20 years, Solid Industries in Calgary has served the machining needs for area companies in a
wide range of industries. Many of the shop’s customers are in Alberta’s booming oil and gas industry. However, in recent years, Solid Industries has expanded into farming, aerospace, and more.

Several years ago, the shop’s leadership team realized that the business had grown too large to continue with the same processes they had always used. Most of their processes were managed either by manually created documents or an internal database developed by an employee. Those systems weren’t robust enough to give the shop’s managers the data or the control they needed.

Maria Hunter, Assistant Manager at Solid Industries, said the shop looked at several software platforms but ultimately chose E2 because of its ease-of-use. She said, “Right away, we were impressed by how user-friendly E2 is. When thinking about implementation and training our employees, it was important to us that the software be easy to learn. E2 was the clear winner on that point.”

Eliminate Waste and Boost Efficiency

Today, Solid Industries uses E2 to manage a wide range of functions, including quoting, materials, scheduling, and shipping. The shop recently became ISO certified and said it would be nearly impossible to meet ISO’s strict quality standards without E2.

According to Maria, one of the most helpful aspects of E2 is the software’s ability to sort and locate important information. She said, “Before, it was nearly impossible to find information. We would have to sort through physical forms, emails, and spreadsheets and even after all that, you still might not find what you’re looking for. With E2, you can find basically anything within a few clicks. You can search by part, customer, invoice, basically anything. It’s made our jobs so much easier.”

Solid Industries recently expanded their use of E2 by implementing handheld scanners into the shop. Now, instead of using physical time cards to track work, team members simply scan a traveler as the job moves through their station. All team members can get real-time information about where any job is at any time.

Finally, Maria talked about how helpful the Shoptech staff has been from the time they decided to implement the software. Solid Industries had a Shoptech implementation specialist onsite for a few days to get the entire team up and running. Several team members have also attended one of Shoptech’s many live training sessions.

Maria added, “Shoptech’s support staff is always there to help us with any issue we have. I couldn’t be happier with E2 or with Shoptech support. I would highly recommend it to any shop that is looking to be more efficient and successful.”