The manufacturing industry is changing as a new generation of buyers ushers in different expectations and skillsets. As pressure is rising for job shops to modernize, Industry 4.0 needs to be more than just a buzzword, but a mindset. What does it look like when this mindset is applied on the ground? Shops that choose … Continued
Today we launch The Women of American Manufacturing, an open conversation where we sit down with women leaders and makers across the manufacturing industry to explore their journeys into manufacturing, their vision for the future, and the innovation, creativity, and change that they bring to the industry. What is The Women of American Manufacturing all … Continued
We’ve built Paperless Parts with a tight-knit, gritty engineering team of A players. As we expand our team, we’ve asked ourselves an important question: What are the characteristics of a successful engineer at Paperless Parts? Here’s how we answered. Successful engineers take ownership of the entire lifecycle of a user story There may be some … Continued
This is the sin that leaves money on the table. Buyers don’t always communicate what they want, or what is most valuable to them. They want their order on-time, but is getting it three days faster more valuable to them? Some buyers may tell you they need an expedited order, but they want it at … Continued
Many job shops have only one person who does all the quoting for the company. While consistency is great, what happens when this person gets sick, moves, or retires? Having a single point of failure in any part of your business is a big risk, and it is no different for quoting. Quoting is one … Continued
You know the drill all too well. You receive an RFQ and your quoting process begins. You want to get the quote out fast because you know many buyers expect a 24-hour turnaround on quotes (a recent survey we conducted to 370 buyers shows that 68% of buyers expect a quote in less than 24 … Continued
In quoting, redundancy is a time killer, and since getting the quote out as quickly as possible is critical to winning a quote, time is something you can’t afford to waste. There is a lot of intellectual knowledge that goes into quoting a job, so why not reference past quotes where you already invested that … Continued
We have found that during the Covid-19 pandemic, some shops have been able to thrive while others have been severely affected, prompting the question of why some businesses are on the upswing while others continue to struggle. Here we go over some of the reasons that we believe are behind this disparity. Revenue concentration, working … Continued
In short, I love Manufacturing. I find a certain type of elegance and beauty that manufacturing has to bring people, as well as ideas, together from a diverse set of disciplines to accomplish a common goal. From a young age, I have always appreciated what it takes to make something from scratch. This started from … Continued