Field notes
What we have learned running a shop on one record.
Written from inside a working precision machining shop — the patchwork, the arithmetic, and the questions worth asking any vendor before you sign.
Why your shop runs on five systems, and what that actually costs
The integration cost is the only cost in a shop with no line item, so it is the only one nobody manages. Three questions tell you what it is costing you.
Estimated versus actual: why the comparison breaks in most shops
A total tells you that you lost. Only a line tells you why. Four reasons the comparison degrades into reporting, and a worked example of the difference.
What five months on one record actually changed
Five months of first-party results from the shop this software was built in: the real margins, a schedule that stopped guessing, and what it freed up.
A quoting tool and a shop ERP do not add up to a closed loop
Four places a connector between two vendors leaks: the seam’s owner, silent drift, lost granularity and latency. And how to tell which bites your shop.
Twelve questions to ask an ERP vendor before you buy
Twelve questions where vendor answers actually differ, three answers that should slow you down, and two things to ask yourself instead.
What switching systems actually involves
Floor adoption decides every ERP implementation. The eight-week sequence that derails one, the cutover order that avoids it, and what to put in writing.
See it run a job, end to end.
Thirty minutes on a shop set up like yours — RFQ to invoice.