FabTrol Insights
Thoughts and insights from our General Manager
Proper management of material grades is one of the most important features in your material management software. Grades should always be included in the import and your software should quickly and easily “learn” about grade callout conflicts and never bother you about that particular conflict again.
Grade and other material definition conflicts are problems because:
- Your shop, your detailers, sub-contract detailers and various detailing software don't always define grades in exactly the same way.
- If you don't import the grade you are always depending on human memory or someone's assumption to keep things straight.
- Your nesting/multing system won't be as effective if some of your stock is defined as A572-50 and some as A572 Gr. 50; and it's even worse if you allow even more variations during your bill of materials import. Optimization engines lack the human skill of recognizing when something that looks different is actually the same thing and will provide inefficient answers when the grades aren't all synchronized.
None of this should pose a problem for your material management software and you shouldn’t accept software that “simplifies” this by ignoring or assuming grades during the import or nesting process—this could cost you thousands, even tens of thousands of dollars in back-charges. Your software should screen grades and manage translations during every import. It should be trivial for any user to teach the software a new translation from something like A572.50 or A572 Gr 50 to something like A572-50.
FabTrol MRP and it’s new software, FabTrol Pro and FabTrol Shop:
- Let you know about the material definition discrepancy (unless you've previously discovered and covered it).
- Make it easy for even an inexperienced user to teach the software that the new label should be imported as A572-50 (if that's how you choose to call out the grade).
- And never require a user to define this for the software again; the software learns and adds to its knowledge of type, size and grade callouts during each import, requiring less and less of the user.
FabTrol MRP has always provided easy-to-use translation tools and FabTrol's new software FabTrol Shop and FabTrol Pro can even start out by importing material definitions that match your most common file source. Still it probably won't match definitions from the next software or detailer. So just define your types/sizes and grades to match ASTM standards (or your most common source of import files) and then you can quickly and easily teach the software about variations as they occur.
It's not uncommon for a single remnant to represent hundreds of dollars--and this doesn't include the cost to store, track and retrieve it. This value represents missed opportunities while it's sitting out in the yard rusting; and that value is drastically reduced when you give up and dump it into the scrap bin.
In FabTrol MRP we support creating a virtual rem even before you cut the bar it will eventually come from. This is a popular, well-used feature and allows you to nest into the leftover material before you actually create the physical remnant.
In our new software, FabTrol Pro, we've improved this process. Just add the part(s) to the existing stock bar on the existing cut list (even if the parts are for a different project). This has some nice advantages over the old system:
- You never create a rem in the system before you have one in the yard.
- If you use our live feed to the saw the saw operator's cut list is updated in milliseconds.
- So he cuts the additional parts while the stock bar is loaded on the saw.
- Without having to coordinate multiple cut lists.
For more advanced multing tips and information on using our new software to manage them, you can download the first white paper from our "Profit vs. Project" series, here.
This morning FabTrol's halls and email inboxes are abuzz with conversations about Steve Jobs and his impact on us and the world. We are saddened by his passing but always encouraged by the power and value of his work and example.
Before Steve Jobs, great designers preached the value of elegant solutions. They filled books with examples of objects and devices that, once they existed, felt like they were destined to be delivered in that particular way. A few enlightened people learned from this message and appreciated these books. Then Steve Jobs helped the rest of us catch up and catch on. He raised popular expectations and let the consumer know that he should expect elegant technology that was easy to learn and delightful to use.
He was raised by uneducated parents, a college drop-out and, in his words, "very publicly fired" from the company he started in his garage. Here is his 2005 commencement speech at Stanford where he describes the philosophy that helped him connect those and other dots for good purpose in his life.
From that speech,
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart...
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.
Everything else is secondary ...
We've talked to hundreds of owners and managers who depend on FabTrol to help them make money, and save money, every day. So we know you want software that's easy for your team to learn and provides automatic access to vital information without forcing you to repeatedly set a complicated filter or dig into the details.
This empowers you to make faster, more knowledgeable decisions that can save material and labor costs, prevent mistakes and help you win the next project.
Our dev group continues to deliver this powerful automation. For a glimpse of some of the new tools, including powerful forms that automatically deliver vital information the second they are opened, check out our new YouTube video: FabTrol Does More
With so much positive feedback at FabTrol’s NASCC booth, more interest than we could accommodate at our NASCC software preview lunch and packed webinars after the show, we decided it was time to come to you and share first-hand why everyone is so excited about our new software.
If you’re a steel fabricator and you haven’t seen the software, check out our roadshow stops over the next few months. If you ‘re located near San Francisco, Fresno, Sacramento, Phoenix, San Diego, Los Angeles, Boston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Chicago or Denver, a member of our team will be in your area to demonstrate the software and talk to you in person about your specific needs.
Visit http://www.fabtrol.com/new and make your roadshow reservation today.
Rex and Randy, two members of our training staff, have put together a list of tools and tricks that will enhance your experience whether you enter or import the bill of material into FabTrol's estimating system. My favorite is entering the location and type of work in our drawing and phase fields and then using our Phase/Drawing and Drawing/Phase reports to organize the estimate by location then type of work or by type of work then location.
This is just a quick reference to make sure you know about all of the powerful tools that are available to you. You can find the list here in our product support area. For more detail you can search our help system or call one of our services staff.
Most of the people who work for FabTrol do the majority of their work in the Eugene office. Our sales and marketing group is outnumbered about four to one by our research, development, training, and support and services staff, making it difficult to justify sending more than one or two representatives from these diverse groups to the NASCC.
FabTrol is blessed with many wonderful customers and it’s always great to see them and hear how they are doing—even when they give us grief about something. It was particularly exciting this year because of all the buzz about our new product, which they will receive as part of their normal support and maintenance. We presented the software many times each day at the booth and to as many people as we could cram into the room we booked for lunch. We should have booked a larger room! We ran out of time before we covered half of the software and had no trouble holding their interest well beyond the scheduled time (of course the meal arriving late could have contributed to that. Sorry). Customers were particularly pleased with the drawing log and multi-job nesting and all seemed to grasp the power of the deeply integrated custom filter and reporting system.