One of the toughest jobs in manufacturing is estimating. If done right the company can be very profitable and deliver a quality part on time, every time which leads to increased sales. If done wrong, well, let’s just say that isn’t good.

For many manufacturers being able to compare your estimates versus your actuals is just as hard as estimating because it assumes that you actually know your actual costs (but that is for another blog, or you can just read our costing product page and our FLOOOM product).

Since nearly every manufacturing business is run slightly differently and make decisions on different pieces of data, you need an ERP software system that has the flexibility to build and modify applications or reports to get you what you need. We recently had a customer that wanted to know the estimates versus actuals of a multi-level BOM (bill of material) and all the completed operations. Using the Global Shop Solutions SDK and our talented custom development team we provided exactly what the customer required and some additional information such as material last received vs material weighted average, quantity of good versus quantity of scrap pieces.

The customer was able to improve their estimating and profitability with these comparisons and specifically see profitability by operation and material pricing trends due to this report. Now the great thing is all applications or reports written using our SDK become available to the rest of the Global Shop Solutions customer ecosystem. All of our customers that want this data can now have it with the simple click of a mouse from our Application and Reports Center (ARC).

Push the Sled blog is written by Dusty Alexander, CEO of Global Shop Solutions, because no matter how good you get (at physical fitness, running a manufacturing business or being an ERP user) you can always work harder, get better, and be humble.