Small Shop office management

Sorry in advance but this could get a bit long winded.

I am a younger guy and have a small job shop with 4-5 guys on the floor including myself. We specialize in precision low volume automation components. I myself run all the operations (office and shop) as well as try to keep our 5 axis going as much as possible. For a small shop with a great team we pump out a lot of work and work a lot of hours. We have great quality and are never late on orders but it is for sure organized chaos and I find we are always just getting by.

As we have grown and gotten busier, I am finding it difficult to stay organized from the office and business side of things while also trying to be on the machine. Hiring another body would help but as we all know its impossible to find good help and to be honest, I would hate to be off the machine and at my desk full time.

I was hoping for some feedback into how some small shop owners wearing multiple belts manage their office end in the way of quoting, scheduling, billing and what a day to day looks like for them and how they keep everything organized.

I believe we are too small for ERP and from what I can see it’s a lot of data entry which I am trying to help cut down on although I am open to software that might help keep jobs organized.

When I do get around to quoting my desk becomes an explosion of marked up prints(mostly converting to imperial what a waste of time)that I thrash through. Some customers want pricing on letterhead, some want their spreadsheets filled out and others are Ok just with a quick email response. When I do get the PO which could be days or weeks later I usually simply confirm over my phone since I am on the machine and make a mental note or schedule it into my google calendar. Once the job is up I dump the files onto the sever and re print all the prints and we go to town. After that its making tags by hand, inputting everything into QuickBooks and so on. The redundancies drive me nuts of quoting on a spreadsheet which you can’t copy into QuickBooks and QuickBooks not being able to make tags. I feel like I am doing everything 3 times.

I know if I spent some time daily making more job folders with purchase orders models drawings and scheduled every order into a calender it would tidy my day to day up but I just struggle to find that time while I which the spindle not run from my office.

Thanks in advance for any feedback.

I run my own shop, and I designate a slot of time in the morning, usually 9 am, to do desk work.
No matter what, I don't leave until the quoting and accounting are done. Then on to the CNCs and the work to be done.

Shane39 said:

I believe we are too small for ERP and from what I can see it’s a lot of data entry which I am trying to help cut down on although I am open to software that might help keep jobs organized.

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You are never too small for ERP. The problem is finding an ERP with low overhead(time/$$$). If you are relatively savey you can make an in-house "ERP" to meet your needs. This can grow as you grow. Think simple as possible but functional. Who knows maybe a mildly complicated excel spreadsheet can do what you need.

It sounds to me that you feel the best way to drive and ensure success for your business is to be out on the shop floor.

Everywhere is hurting for good help these days, but I think you might have better luck looking for a clerical/administrative assistant type rather than another machinist.

In my experience, it is much more difficult to find the mechanical aptitude required to be successful on the machines, than someone who is good with converting measurements, data entry, making phone calls and emails, etc.

Being fairly young myself, I can say that a large portion (but not all) of the kids my age were educated in preparation for careers in what I would consider "white collar" fields. So there is a very large pool of folks that might not be able to turn a wrench, but are smart enough to do the stuff that is taking time from you doing your thing on the shop floor. Might not be the best solution or the only one, but just my 2 cents.

Create a list of the tasks you are juggling. Put it on "paper" (Word or Excel) and make sure that list is complete.
Sort those tasks into categories and group those (e.g. accounting, quoting, blueprints, etc.)

This List represents / illustrates your problem and can be used for your two options below.

1) As DouglasRizzo pointed out: Organize blocks of time to deal with certain items. As an addendum to that, what I've done where I work is to create tracking/alerting tools that look out for me using Excel, and in some cases MS-Access. We'll stick with Excel for this post.

As one of several examples: There are about 25 miscellaneous "inspections", or maintenance tasks that have to occur throughout the year. I wrote a spreadsheet that lets me list these on a summary page, with their intervals, combined with a check on when the last check was done. If something comes due, it highlights the next due date in red.

This helps me when I hit one of my "blocked out" times to check on that stuff, because all I have to do is open the spreadsheet and look for red flags.

Don't underestimate how much you can help yourself with smart spreadsheet use, if an ERP isn't an option. Once you have an ERP someday you can drop some of the individual tools you've built if the ERP centralizes that.

2) Hire someone to do the "front office" or other work. I don't know your shop, so I'm not qualified to go into this at any depth. The obvious is: Hire someone proficient with computers, Excel, accounting, whatever, and who has a desire to think outside the box and learn something new.

Your List would help in this scenario also, giving you a roadmap of the duties and responsibilities to discuss with someone you are interviewing or have hired.

Best of luck to you.

Marry an accountant!

When I was your size I had some one come in and set up some kind of file sharing thing in Microsoft Office. We had a couple of computers networked together.
Every morning I would see what orders came in the previous day, enter them into someplace in Office and send it to the other computer.

I had 1 guy who did my programming, set-up and run CNC's. So it would go to his computer. If it was a repeat job he would print out the job router, set-up sheets, program and check for tooling. All this would go in a clear plastic folder and back to my desk. If it was a new job, he would write up a quick order of operations, program the job and make out a tool list. This wouldn't be formalized in the system until it was a repeat job. Saved a lot of time that way.

I did the quoting, scheduling, dealt with customers, billing, payables and payroll and ran a machine. He did the programming, tooling inventory and ran machines.

At some point you're going to grow into not being able to do everything, so you might as well get some systems in place for others to help out. Naturally this will slow down the processing of jobs but it is the nature of the beast.

my .02

There are 1 man shops running ERP - remember to think not just of the cost, but of the cost savings - that is, if a good ERP systems means you don't have to hire an office manager, that means it's saving you $$$/month. However, you need to find the right one for (machine shop oriented rather than run GE oriented).

There are other kinds of automated tools, both web based and built up on apps that we've used on PCs forever.