Work Order Management for Manufacturing

A client who manufactures lenses for use in optical equipment was finding it difficult to manage customer orders. With multiple ways to communicate project details – from email to spreadsheets and notes added to engineering design drawings left on someone’s desk – it was impossible to be sure that all order details had been captured.

Solutions

We met with the client to learn more about the types of information to be integrated into the new application. The paper forms that team members had been sharing with each other served as a guiding resource for defining the processes.

Within eight months we designed an internal web application that allowed them to browse through every work order and view related details. With one click from the main work order, all supporting documentation is at their fingertips and shareable with members of the team. This provides a big-picture view of work coming in and the progress to date.

The system also included a dynamic dashboard that showed upcoming work on each project so managers could project potential bottlenecks and ensure adequate staffing for the workload. Users can apply different filters to dive deeper into the details.

Impact

By managing the engineering documentation required for the manufacturing process, the application we created helped to reduce errors, enabled faster and more accurate communication, and resulted in quicker product turnaround.

“We had too many ways of sharing information, and nothing was tied together,” said our client. “With the amount of growth we’ve experienced since launching the application, we never would have been able to manage our process without the system.”

Optical Systems Manufacturer

$150,000

About 8 months

Fewer errors, faster and more accurate communication, and time savings that resulted in a 5X ROI over the first two years.

C#, ASP.NET MVC, SQL Server, jQuery