Profile at a Glance: Established in 1984 as a manufacturer of laminate casework and countertops, Pro Lam has expanded its offering to include wood and laminate casework, cabinetry and most types of countertops, including laminate, solid surface, granite, quartz and marble. The company uses automated equipment to generate over 100 commercial and residential projects per month from its 22,000 sq. ft. facility, and employs about 30 people. Pro Lam sells to kitchen and bath dealers, commercial contractors and retail residential customers.
The Problem: As product offerings expanded and its customer base became more diverse, the company’s existing management software package was unable to keep up with the growth. Scheduling, in particular, was a sorely needed feature.
“We used an older piece of software that, from a scheduling aspect, was weak,” explains Shannon Bitzer, owner of Pro Lam. “It allowed us to make a presence in the jobs and keep track of them, but there was so much lacking that we knew we wanted to do, but didn’t have the capability.”
The Moraware Solution: Not only did JobTracker provide an easy-to-use and accurate scheduling feature for Pro Lam, its flexible platform offered powerful features for project costing and management, inventory control, client-side management and job tracking and real time evaluations of resource management.
“We appreciate the flexibility of JobTracker to manipulate time tracking on individual projects throughout the manufacturing process,” Bitzer says. “We have each piece of equipment set up in JobTracker to estimate their production times. As the guys in the shop enter the real world data we get, not only an estimated time of when the job will be completed, but real world data to track costs.”
“It is our bible. It is in every work station. It is an Internet based piece of software, so we can access it from anywhere in the country.”
“We have incorporated JobTracker into our website so that our clientele can actually look at their jobs in progress in real time. They see our schedule, which could change right in front of their eyes. For example, let’s say a project is completed and is sitting on an A-frame for three days waiting for installation. The client knows the job is finished and ready for completion on a particular date without having to pick up the phone to call our office.”
“Before JobTracker, we averaged between 30 and 40 projects per month. Now we are averaging over 100. There is no way we could have done that without JobTracker.”
“We use the Auto Schedule feature to tell us when things can be done. If is not do-able, JobTracker tells us how long another shift – or overtime – is needed to meet the schedule. That means we can calculate our costs, even in overtime situations, long before we start the project.”
“We now have bid consistency. We have so many salespeople out there that sometimes we have two people bidding the same project unbeknownst to each other. Yet, when the numbers come in they are exactly the same.”
“JobTracker has put us into a situation where we can really tighten our numbers, yet offer quality and fast turnaround, while still making a healthy profit.”
