The bottleneck
"We were running three spreadsheets — one for jobs, one for inventory, one for actuals. By the time we knew if a job was profitable, it was already shipped."
The rework rate sat at 18%. Nobody could explain it until jobs came back. The estimator was building quotes on assumptions that hadn't been tested against reality in months. Quote turnaround was 3–4 days, and the owners knew some bids were slipping because of it — but they had no way to prove it.
The floor was running on memory. And memory doesn't scale past about 15 people.
What we built
CBS gave them three interconnected modules — each one replacing one of those spreadsheets:
Active Projects
Real-time job tracking on the floor. Every job has a status card the whole team can see — not a spreadsheet that only the person who built it knows how to read.
Quotes
Margin visibility per job before the next quote goes out. Actual labor hours, material costs, and overhead — not gut feelings.
Inventory
Material tied to job records. When a job needs something, the system knows if it's on hand — before the machinist finds out it's not.
What changed
| Metric | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Rework rate | 18% | 6% |
| Job cost visibility | After invoicing | Before next quote |
| Quote turnaround | 3–4 days | 1–2 days |
| Scheduling confidence | "We think it'll ship Friday" | "It'll ship Friday" |
"We finally know what we're actually making on each job — before we bid the next one." — Owner, Midwest Precision Machining
Note: Case studies are based on real shop archetypes. Details are fictionalized for privacy.