In a recent webinar hosted by The Fabricator, Doss CEO Wiley Jones shared actionable insights on how metal fabricators can extract real value from their business data. Here's what matters most for your shop floor:

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Stop Data Collection Headaches: Save 1,000+ Hours Annually

For fabricators, the endless chase for accurate information is eating your profits. Your team spends hours manually collecting data that should be instantly available:

• "What's the status on the order?"
• "Do we have enough material for the rush job that just came in?"
• "When will that machine be available for the next job?"

One of our customers eliminated 20 separate paper forms from their warehouse operations, replacing them with a single digital workflow that both floor workers and management could access instantly from an iPad.

"We're talking about legitimately thousands of hours a year that they're saving as a company by correctly unlocking their business data."

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Handle Hot Orders Without the Fire Drill

For high-mix, low-volume fabricators, urgent changes shouldn't trigger chaos. When a customer calls with a last-minute modification, the traditional "game of telephone" wastes valuable time and introduces errors as information travels from sales to the floor to shipping.

With properly integrated data, anyone can instantly see where an order stands in production, whether changes have been applied, and exactly when it will ship—all in real time. This eliminates the scramble and keeps your operation running smoothly, even when priorities shift.

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Make Your Software Adapt to Your Shop (Not Vice Versa)

Metal fabricators have unique processes that generic ERP systems don't understand. Traditional systems force you to choose between:

1. Change your proven shop processes to fit the software

OR

2. Pay massive customization fees for modifications that break with every update

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"We designed our software and our system not for the 80% but for the 20% because that's where people get tripped up."

Instead, look for systems that recognize 80% of fabrication processes are common, but the 20% that makes your shop special shouldn't require expensive customization.

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Demand Planning That Actually Works for Job Shops

For fabricators balancing stock materials with custom work, traditional demand planning often feels irrelevant. Focus on understanding these relationships:

• Raw material inventory to finished goods conversion time
• Production capacity to customer lead time expectations
• Cash conversion cycle (from material purchase to customer payment)

This approach works even for job shops with less predictable demand patterns, helping optimize purchasing decisions and cash flow.

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Know Your True Job Costs

Many fabricators struggle to track actual production costs against estimates.

The Value Unlock: One company reported they "literally couldn't" track production costs in their previous system. With proper data integration, they could finally see:

• Real material usage per job
• Actual machine time vs. estimated
• Labor hours across departments
• Margin analysis by job type and customer

This visibility alone allowed them to adjust pricing on consistently unprofitable work and identify their most valuable customer relationships.

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Cut Manual Data Entry with AI

While it can't fix everything, AI is able to help handle unstructured communications.

Practical Applications Today:

• Converting emailed order specifications into structured work orders
• Extracting delivery requirements from customer communications
• Translating supplier lead time updates from emails into purchasing data
• Converting phone conversations into actionable job changes

"For the first time, these AI models are getting really good at the unstructured data too... they're going to be able to read the email and say, 'I know what they're talking about' and turn it into structured data we can use."

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Get Meaningful Information to the Shop Floor

For fabricators, information needs to be accessible where the work happens. Creating systems that:

• Allow floor workers to update job status in seconds
• Provide mobile access to drawings and specifications
• Enable real-time quality control documentation
• Connect inventory consumption directly to purchasing

will drastically change operations for the better.

The Bottom Line for Fabricators

The manufacturers seeing the biggest gains aren't just digitizing—they're rethinking how information flows:

1. Automate the mechanical - Let systems handle data collection and routine updates
2. Focus human judgment on strategic decisions - Material purchasing, capacity planning, customer prioritization
3. Create a single source of truth - Everyone from sales to shipping working from the same real-time data
4. Connect your value chain - From customer specifications to material procurement to shipping

Most importantly, demand software that adapts to your proven processes. As Wiley emphasized:

"Don't design your operations for software. Design software for your operations."

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Want to see how leading fabricators are unlocking value from their shop floor data? Book a live demo with our team.

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