Driving Growth In Your Manufacturing Company 

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Manufacturing shops are changing the way they document, communicate, and complete jobs. There are countless benefits to changing the way employees work through digitization.

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Eliminate information silos.  Information silos are often used to refer to the concept of people or groups not sharing their knowledge and insight with each other. Most shop owners do not realize how often this is occurring on the shop floor. Something as simple as the best grind thickness to allow for plating could be lost if one employee with this knowledge retires without passing it on. The walls to information silos can be knocked down through the digitization of the documentation that needs to be accessed and processes that need to occur on a daily basis. StartProto's cloud-based, paperless ERP system was built around making information capture as seamless as possible and allows everyone to update job documentation in real-time, store on-the-job insights, and propagate improvements throughout the organization.

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Avoid mistakes. Connectivity is more vital than ever in today’s productivity-focused world. Paper-based systems are faulty, time-consuming, expensive, and are prone to perpetuating outdated information. An employee could spend more time looking for a drawing than time on the actual job. One outdated piece of paper in the wrong place can cost thousands of dollars in rework. Keeping track of your documentation digitally, whether related to specific jobs, machines, or just general shop operating procedures, can help you avoid making these mistakes. StartProto puts scheduling, real-time data, and collaboration at the operator’s fingertips. 

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Manage the workflow. Job directions can often be complex and the priorities of your workers can change with one hot job. Keeping track of these things can be a hassle in a paper-based workflow: documents can easily be lost or misplaced, leading to incorrect job processes or out-of-order production. Even worse, throwing a hot job in front of an operator confuses their priorities and can lead to wasted teardown/setup time and lower quality. Quality cannot be rushed. The StartProto software functions as a digital job router that dynamically assigns work based on order priority - the operator simply needs to finish what they’re working on then look to the system for what’s next. 

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Optimize for Employee Happiness. A sense of community is more important than ever, but can sometimes be difficult for machine shop employees to create and maintain. A space where employees can share tips, tricks, and notes not only saves time on production jobs, but fosters a productive community among employees. Our software allows operators to comment on current documentation and workflows. If the comment is popular and appears to be a real improvement to what is currently being done, the comment can be liked by other users. This allows operators to both earn recognition for their contribution and spread improvement to similar processes. 

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Utilize StartProto. StartProto’s capabilities will elevate your shop to the next level. See what else digitizing your shop floor can do for you and start a free trial today. 

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