Case study: Peter, the owner of a small joiner’s workshop shares his thoughts on Prodio.

Living out of a suitcase

“When we had to cancel our summer holidays again, I thought my partner was going to kill me,” – says Peter, the owner of a small joiner’s workshop, who took it over 3 years ago to continue the tradition and experience of the family business. Since then, the workshop specializing in window and door manufacturing cooperated with local locksmith shops and undertaken a range of projects to fully satisfy the wishes of customers whose satisfaction has always been a top priority.

“At first, it felt like a dream come true: we were super busy, had loads of orders, I was in my element” – he remembers. “Quite quickly, we built a reputation for a high level of service.” The customers were beating down their door. 

To keep all deadlines and complete orders on time, Peter hired 5 more people, so in total, there were 10 of them working in the workshop. “That’s when my struggle started” – he sighs. “I had to be there almost 24/7 to supervise first-class artistry and assembly, monitor progress, guide and solve problems on the spot. I spent more time at the workshop than with my family, not to mention friends, trying to plan, schedule orders, minimize material loss, controlling workers and the quality of our products.” Still, there were times when Peter was tired of all the nonsense his workers wrote on production orders. Handwritten scribbles on a piece of paper torn from the old notebook, unclear and hard to decipher. Last-minute changes in parameters added as a note in the corner, often intelligible. It took ages to copy everything into Excel. The more orders they had, the worse information flow was.  

Slowly, but surely more and more mistakes were made, which resulted in complaints. After all, the paper is costly, slow to file, and highly prone to human error, among other things. Knowing which tasks need to be done and keeping track of progress can be a headache when everything is being noted traditionally. 

On top of that, each time Peter wasn’t physically present in the workshop, the job was botched, so he often burnt the midnight oil or sacrificed his family time to improve the whole process’s efficiency by a few per cent, specify a measurement or learn something new. But it wasn’t enough.

When you hire 10 people in your workshop, even an increase of 3% in productivity will earn you enough money to pay for a family vacation. How much is 3% on a scale of a daily wage? It’s about 13-14 minutes of more productive time per worker per day. 

The big change for Peter started with setting up a computer at the workshop, so the workers could check-in/ check out, and all working process was registered. It resulted in a 5-6% efficiency rise, where all he needed was a mere 3 %. What followed was paperless manufacturing. “Prodio really changed my life,” – he says. “It is the easiest online system for managing tasks at the workshop. Everything is always in the system, up-to-date, and in real-time. We can keep track of records.”

“I had been looking for a tool which would tackle all issues we had. Something ideal for a modern workshop that wants to grow fast. A tool that allows me to be on the ball and make decisions in real-time without the necessity of being present at the workshop all the time ”.

Prodio allows manufacturers, like Peter, to track the progress of their production schedules remotely, which is especially great if your office and production floor are not physically close to each other. You can perform automatic manufacturing costs calculations, which is going to help you scale your business.

Prodio provides the tools to manage your entire business and manage it from any place, at any time, from the cloud.

“I was desperate to take some time off and spend it with my loved ones. But there was always something urgent, a deadline to keep, the last order to complete. Now I am free to do so”, says Peter zipping up his suitcase. He is looking forward to a weekend break and is not worried that his workshop will stop without him. “Now I have everything I need in my pocket, on my mobile phone” – he smiles.

Read more on how to use Prodio production planning software in your workshop.

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