Case history: Realtrac® pays back in eight months

“We’re a short-run production machine shop that works exclusively with metal,” says Jeff Stringer, owner of Superior Products, Croswell, Michigan. “We do tool and die work, handling many orders for one and two parts, also production orders of 5,000 to 10,000 units. In the same location, Stringer operates a second firm called Metalon that’s in “the die detail business—fixtures, gages, precision grinding, and more,” he states. His two firms and a subcontracting operation employ 12 people.

In the past, Superior Products entered new orders by hand on six spreadsheets. Any change was entered six times. “We had sheets for Open Order, Customer Job, Job Costing, and more,” says Stringer. “Information was all over the place. We were drowning in paperwork and wasting time with redundant data entry.”

For about five years, Stringer searched “off and on” for a Shop Scheduling package. “We looked closely at three to four packages and one of them was Realtrac®,” he says.“On the same day that we requested information over the Internet, Realtrac’s Don Colley contacted us.”

Realtrac, which calls itself “The industry leader in realtime job shop software,” has headquarters in Irvine, California. Specifically designed for the job shop manufacturing environment, Realtrac combines six functions: shop floor control, scheduling and estimating, multimedia shop floor documentation, bar code data collection, materials management, and job cost analysis. All data comes up rapidly on the screen and can be changed just as rapidly through the database.

“Software is a gamble,” Stringer continues, “but Colley put our mind at ease because he knew what the product could do. We never had to shut down our operations to install Realtrac and it took about ten hours total, working fairly smoothly, to train me, my wife, and our plant supervisor.”

All training was done over the telephone and on the Internet. “Realtrac used a Web Conference, which means that we saw each others’ computers and worked through things together,” says Stringer. “It was like having their representative in our plant, but much simpler. Realtrac was very flexible and agreed to train us after working hours. They have excellent support.”

All of Superior Products’ information is now stored in a database and management enters data only once—and has one place to obtain information. The software generates Job Packets (i.e., shop travelers) that can include CNC machining programs, pictures, files, and inspection sheets.

“Realtrac cut our order processing time by 35 percent to 40 percent,” says Stringer, “and saved us a boatload of purchasing time.” Now, when a repeat order comes in, Stringer pulls up the previous order to see the source and cost of materials, and how long it took to get them.“Shop control has improved because we can view the shop instantly. Our on-time performance is much better.”

When a major customer did a Vendor Audit at Superior Products, Stringer showed them the Realtrac program and they were “very impressed,” he says. “It’s a total package that provides traceability of all jobs,” he says. “When customers make a change to an order, we find it at once, make the change, and know exactly how that will affect operations.”

Bottom line: Realtrac, which was up and running for about $10,000, eliminated duplication of effort, dramatically improved operations, and allowed Superior Products to reassign one office employee. “I’d estimate payback at six to eight months,” says Stringer. “The operators like it as much as we do—and they don’t miss the old job tickets. Many are young guys who grew up using computers.”

Reprinted from Shop Talk magazine, with permission.