
2023 is taking job shops in electroplating, anodizing, e-coating, liquid coating, and powder coating to new levels of visibility and growth potential. In this article on Finishing and Coating, Jeff Halonen, Co-Founder and CEO of Steelhead Technologies shares just what's to come.
While Steelhead attended the annual FABTECH conference, the team took to the aisles of the tradeshow and surveyed 55 fabricators. The Steelhead team discovered that 66% of shops have already brought their finishing/coating in-house due to lead times. Steelhead customers in finishing job shops have frequently described their struggles managing long lead times from extremely difficult and inefficient scheduling, as well as revenue left on the table by not offering expedited services.
Steelhead is taking Capacity Planning and Scheduling to the next level in the Metal Finishing industry in 2023. With a fully predictive AI scheduling, production will be modeled before it happens, eliminating time spent generating schedules. This will provide reliable lead times, improve production efficiency, and unlock the expedited services business model.
"Customers are focused on automation and insights. We need to work smarter, not harder," says Jeff Halonen. "With automation, we answer the questions: How can we do this faster? Can we eliminate this step? What if every time we did X, Y would happen? I spend 3 hours a week doing this same task every week. I quote on nights and weekends. We need to streamline!"
Jeff dives into the requirements of job shop insights and analytics, "Can I see an instant overview of the dollar value of work in progress per customer? Can I track the efficiency of each line? How can we better understand our quoting and sales conversions? Which industries are growing or shrinking? Which customers are growing or struggling? Which geographies are seeing growth?"
Features like Automated Quoting, Reporting, and Margins add transformational value for shops, including boosting profits by 5% to 35%. Features like Workboards, with operator instruction improve quality and improve training time, by focusing the software to serve those on the plant floor (not just the front office). These features replace complex excel sheets and whiteboards, and automated customer notifications continues to save countless phone calls and emails.
Above all, the single biggest hit in 2022 is Automated Profit Margin Tracking. Sales teams and business leaders can guide their companies away from work that is not profitable, and to make commercial and operational adjustments to maximize profitability.