This is a first-person customer testimonial and product demonstration from Maxim Rancout Grenier, General Manager at LG Cloutier, a Paperless Parts customer and full-service metal manufacturer.
My name is Maxim Rancout Grenier. I’m the General Manager at LG Cloutier, and we are a manufacturer of all kinds of metal parts.
We do all kinds of processes, from laser cutting, water cutting, wire cutting, machining, turning, welding, assembly, small parts and big parts. We do it all. As long as it’s in metal, we’ve got pretty much everything.
We were trying to find a solution to be able to quote big assemblies. And when I’m talking about big assemblies, it’s an assembly that could have some parts assembled by hand, other parts welded, and around 150 to 200 parts within one assembly.
The challenge with that is being able to identify every part and component that we need to assemble it and being able to price it accurately.
But we already know that our customers want a quote within 24 or 48 hours, maximum a week. Every time, we had the challenge of delivering that quote within the timeframe the customer wanted.
What happened then is we were trying to deliver the quote, it took two weeks, three weeks, and then most of the time we either lost the quote due to time or trying to negotiate was harder than it needed to be.
With the integration of Paperless Parts that we did almost a year and a half ago, we were able to successfully quote most of those things within 48 hours.
Setting up the quote, which I’m going to show you how we do with a smaller assembly, is a lot easier. We still need to fine-tune some details, but we save a lot of time, and we successfully reply and apply to bulk quotes every day that we didn’t in the past before Paperless.
So if I start a quote, for example, most of the time what we do with our customers is they send an email to our quoting email, and then Paperless Parts takes that email and creates a quote for us.
What I’m going to do is create a quote manually. I’m going to insert the file as if it was linked from an email, and that’s how Paperless proceeds with the email from our customer.
So if I create a quote quite quickly, I’m going to take my files and just drop them off when we want to quote a simple quote.
When, inside the email, the customer tells us what quantity they need, it’s already prefilled. I’m just going to take myself real quick and then create the item.
So most of the time when we receive an email, it starts off like this. We’ve got a quote.
All the parts are already processed on the side. As you see, the part is already processed. We’ll be able to take a look at it, and it’s going to tell us that the contact and customer are already prefilled. The RFQ number, if there’s one, everything in there, Paperless already completes.
When we take a look at the quote, what’s good for us is most of the data can be prefilled by Paperless. Paperless can find all that information within the CAD that has been inserted.
I know I didn’t mention it, but most of the time we are using CAD when quoting with our customers.
Another good thing is, if there’s a question about the CAD at that point, it’s easy, even if the person doesn’t have the CAD tool on their computer, for them to be able to take a look at the CAD and identify if there’s a part that will be problematic or if a dimension fits on all the machines that we currently have.
From there, as you see, like I said, it’s going to be a small assembly.
The customer told us a quantity of 10, 50, and 100, and then we can go deeper down inside each of the components that we receive.
What we can do there, during the integration, we made our own processes for our own machines. It’s used for us to be able to more precisely mark up a price and to make the quote a little bit easier.
For that example, I know I’m going to cut that part with a normal laser, and I know what material that part is.
When the drawing is of higher quality and has more detail inside the drawing, sometimes Paperless Parts can identify the material for you.
Maybe my example wasn’t the best one at this point, so I needed to check the material. But it can sometimes propose the material. It depends on the quality and all the detail that is within the CAD or the supporting file we can drop inside the quote.
For this example, I’m going to just go to each part.
They are all the same material.
I’m going to select the process for each. It prefills information because it suggests to you that it’s the same process. It suggests to you that it should be the same material.
It goes ahead and makes your life easier.
One thing that helps us save a lot of money and helps us quote more accurately is the nesting module.
Since it’s all the same material, I’ll be able to prepare a nesting.
I don’t need a grain direction for those parts. It doesn’t matter.
Generate a nest.
At this point, we already know what the dimensions of the sheet are. If I want to optimize my sheet for any purpose, I don’t want 60 on the width, I want the 48. I’m going to save a little bit on the nest, and that’s pretty much what I’m going to quote. That’s pretty much what I’m going to be using for my production at this point.
So everything is suggested. The quantity can be optimized also for the customer if need be.
Then, as I said, the second thing I take a look at is what’s the step I’m going to use to be able to make the part.
Like I said, it’s going to be a laser-cut part. It’s going to be a folded part. We’ll see that it’s four small folded parts that go inside one assembly that’s going to be welded.
So I need to program that part. I need to put it on the laser.
I need to make the hole maybe. So it’s a suggestion. That’s what we have done to suggest the order and what it could need.
And I need to move the material, fold the material, and then inspect.
Now, for sure, probably that’s out of bounds on that.
So what I’m going to do, I know it’s not going to take an hour for that. Most of the time, it’s a minute per part. It’s not something that’s a big deal, so I’m going to change it.
And that’s what I wanted it to do. I wanted to have something that needed to be changed so that I can show you that, with the process that we’ve made, it calculates some of the data.
And if something appears to not be the reality, we calculate everything, and most of the time it’s a good thing, to be honest. But if something is off, you can always go inside the detail of the part and change it.
And at that point, what it does is show you clearly that somebody made a change there. We calculated 60 minutes, which is off, and now we know a change was made. Who made the change? Everything is tracked.
Another way that you can change the run time instead of opening all the details, you can just enter the field, write the number that you want, and hit enter.
It’s still going to write up that you have changed the data, and then it calculates everything at the same time.
Go back to the assembly part. Still not done. We still need to assemble everything.
This time it’s not going to be something that is cut with the laser. It’s going to be something that we weld with MIG.
So it knows, as I changed the process, okay, we will need our team to take a look at it, make sure that we are prepared. Do we need a jig? Do we need something?
That’s my internal process that I have to figure out. It’s not something I’m going to sell. I might add something to the price at that point. That’s not something I’m going to sell, but I want to have the detail inside Genius afterward.
And everything’s prepared: material, the welding.
Not enough detail at that point probably, so I know I can change it, like we discussed, to 10 minutes to be able to weld it.
I know it’s not going to be manual. It’s going to be with the MIG, so I can move an operation at that point and still add some time to inspect the part.
At this point, what’s the BOM of my part? It’s the three parts that I need with the quantity that they need.
Then once you’re done with it, you have your markup. You have your unit price. You might need a painting process. It’s not the case in this part, but I could add a painting process at this time.
And I could feed my customer with some lead time. It calculated some lead time. I could add it.
And at any time, I could calculate an expedite, what would be the markup to expedite, so that the customer knows that they can have the part faster, but it’s not going to be cheaper.
And then everything is ready to be able to give the number to the customer.
Now, if we go to the quote, that’s the best part of Paperless Parts.
When you give the quote to the customer, I’m going to preview it. It’s not going to send to the customer, but I’m going to preview it so that you guys can all appreciate that.
So when you share the quote with your customer, it’s going to be appearing like this, most likely.
There’s not going to be a preview quote, but you’re going to have your quote number, who prepared the quote, and everything.
And one thing that our customers like a lot with that, they can see their part. They can see all the detail.
They can see all their numbers. They can view it. They can select the price. They see everything, and then they can go into the detail to make sure that everything was quoted accordingly to what they asked.
And now that’s just one part. But when you have 100 parts or you have more components, they can clearly see, okay, that’s not just a number with a price. That’s my part. That’s what I see. And I can move it.
They appreciate all the visuals of what Paperless gives.
Another thing is what we, LG Cloutier, have done in collaboration with Paperless Parts and Genius.
I’m not going to hit the button because it sends an email also to the customer. But once we are done with the quote, when we finalize the quote, it then transfers back to our Genius ERP system.
And that process saves us a lot of time.
Because remember when I discussed it, it could be an assembly of 150 parts, 200 parts.
So what the customer is going to see is their big assembly. They select one line. Okay, good. I like the price of two or seven, whatever, it doesn’t matter.
For us, what it created is the entire BOM, the entire process that was needed to be able to make that part.
So if I go quickly inside Genius, I’ve got my part.
Remember, there’s a four-plate beam support.
The number is already transferred inside Genius.
We made a process so that all the files were transferred also.
And as discussed, we have three components, the ratio that they were needed for the assembly, program, cut, and then fold all three parts.
So everything’s in there. Everything is prepared to be able to do everything. Everything was transferred from Paperless Parts to Genius.
Everything needed from Genius to work was done. And when the quote is finalized, it also creates an order.
It creates an order with the quote in the name and then creates all the BOMs, transfers the price list, transfers everything.
So from there, you can start, and you’re almost ready to produce.
That’s pretty much it for Genius at that point. Everything’s transferred and ready to go.
My real profession, I’m a General Manager, but my profession was in IT, and I’m a programmer.
And when we did all the integration with Paperless Parts, there was an awesome team, awesome support, and everything was done so quickly. It was incredible.
I never did an integration that worked flawlessly like this.
They came here, we worked as a team, and it worked like a charm.
The integration saves us a lot of time.
And what my sales team says about Paperless is everything is easy to read. It’s visual. It’s easy to understand. And it continues to evolve, and it goes in the right direction, clearly.
One of the things I always tell them is my president works in the sales team.
He always says, “I won’t come back.” Once you’ve tasted Paperless Parts, it’s hard to come back from that. It’s so much easier.
Even the customers, they don’t really want another paper quote with nothing, no detail. They really appreciate all the detail, the pictures. It’s a small detail, but they do appreciate it.
And my president always says to me, “I won’t come back from that.”
It’s done. We’re in this adventure forever.
