Moving from a paper based system to an electronic data management system in a machine shop is necessary but difficult. Piping Supplies has been manufacturing steel and alloy pipe flanges in our plant in New Jersey for over 50 years. During that time, we have accumulated a lot of prints, industry specifications and basic business documents. All of those are stored as printed paper.
Piping Supplies is constantly improving our systems and processes to remain a top machine shop in the country. We recently made the decision to build a new office closer to the machine shop. This will help communication between the office and shop, reduce the time to quote customers, and improve efficiency. Transforming to a digital office is part of this project.
The Office is the Heart of the Business
It isn’t until you begin to look at how you are doing a process that you realize how much actually goes on. This is true of the office functions in a manufacturing business. The office is responsible for quoting all machining jobs including the organization of print and specifications to make customer parts. It is also responsible for all order processing functions. Order processing leads to purchasing, invoicing, paying bills and all the accounting functions that keep a business running. Then there is all of the business functions which are necessary in any company. It is a daunting task to move from a mostly paper system to a digital system.
Security Issues to Consider
A lot of our questions center around what to keep as paper back-up and what to throw away once in digital form. We are a Navy contractor and are bound by the requirements of DFARS and NOFORN. The security, both internal and external, is critical. We take this responsibility very seriously and want to make sure our new digital systems meet these requirements also. Keeping paper back-ups of prints and specifications makes sense – at least for now.
Changing the way we Think
Creating a electronic data management system in a machine shop is almost more of a mind set as it is an objective. We have been doing some things the same way for so long it seems sacred. We use three different color copies for customer order processing. I am sure this is a throwback to the time when orders were typed on a typewriter onto triplicate color forms. Is this still needed? No. Will it be hard to get used to? Absolutely. There are many more examples of this type of mindset which everyone will have to overcome.
Backing up your data is crucial
Another thing to consider is backing up all of this digital data. There are cloud based services, external hard drives and redundant systems which can be used to make sure your information is not lost. Once we decide on a method of backing up our data, it is a matter of periodic checks to insure the backups are correct and complete.
This is a big project for our 50+ year old manufacturing company. We have implemented many other innovations in that time. This will be no different. Like so many things we do as machinists, you find a way to make it work.