Manufacturing Workflow Visibility – Does Your Job Shop Need It?

Manufacturing Workflow Visibility – Does Your Job Shop Need It

Improve Job Visibility Across Your Business

When you are manufacturing-to-order or handling repairs-&-maintenance work , how essential is it that your job shop has up-to-the-minute manufacturing workflow Visibility of every job?

The Sticky notes and Excel – Approach

Recently a prospective-client of ours was pulling his hair out, finding it extremely difficult to track quotation inquiries, assessing the progress of the jobs on his shop floor and quantifying with accuracy the costing of each job.  This was affecting his business service levels to his customers who demanded on-going updates on the progress of their jobs. The shop floor manager had a bunch of sticky notes on white-board showing the different stages and status of the jobs.


The sticky notes moved around on the board to reflect the job ‘movements’ during the day. This latter tool was complemented by an excel spreadsheet updated in an all-hands meeting first thing every morning then printed and pinned up in the shop floor in the management office. Of course, that was out of date within an hour of its printing. On another Excel sheet financial information, such as estimated costs, stock shortages an over-runs was being being monitored. Even though excel is widely used, Manufacturing Workflow Visibility with software will help improve your business process.


And management, from Finance to shop-floor were struggling with Questions such as :

  • Are Quotes taking too long to get to our clients ?
  • Are job estimates consistent and based on pre-determined pricing?
  • Is the job going to be profitable?
  • Have the Materials ordered for the Job arrived ?
  • Are all jobs being invoiced and dispatched with minimum delays?

He said it all felt like working in a set of dark rooms that he had to go into and bump around to find out what was there, but he wished someone could just switch on the lights.


JobPRO – Optimise manufacturing workflow visibility with Job-Shop technology

Manufacturing Workflow Visibility

With JobPRO we provided the job shop the manufacturing workflow visibility our client was missing. The system added Manufacturing Workflow Visibility for each member of management and shop-floor, presenting the accurate on-time information each person needed. With job progress visibility now a click-away, JobPRO became a vital tool for the business and to manage critical challenges

Now with good visibility of the the manufacturing workflow, they are finding this to be a key resource for effective management and competitive advantage that is  needed at all levels of the business. Job information now realized in real-time, at a click-of-a-button, is offering their business the tools to pro act and take preemptive action that, often, has avoided costly shop-floor re-runs.


Manufacturing Workflow Visibility applies to shop floor managers and foremen  – they are receiving  notifications of operational sticking points as soon as they happen.

Workflow Visibility applies to materials planning  – their Jobs now drive Procurement -generating Purchase-Orders for ‘Buy-Outs’ – enforcing a Just-In-Time inventory management philosophy substantially mitigating cash flow being tied up in stock sitting for long periods on the shelf.

Manufacturing Workflow Visibility applies to the shop-floor team at each work centre – their Foremen in need of feedback on Work-Centre work progress, now can re-schedule shop-Floor ‘activities’ – and the Artisans receive prompt information on each Job and their ‘next’ Activity.

Workflow Visibility applies to Customer Enquiries – their Sales Reps can now ‘see’ where their customer’s job is the entire workflow and this has minimised and reduced Customer complaints.

Manufacturing Workflow Visibility is an integral component when you integrate ERP Accounting to the shop floor


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