Calumet, Michigan – Industrial Job Shops are an overlooked, undervalued, yet critical piece of the supply chain puzzle. Most notably, industrial job shops are those that clean and finish large volumes of parts such as painting, coating, or treating components in a car, refrigerator, or vacuum cleaner to provide a high-quality product. These manufacturing job shops are falling further behind due to a lack of time, resources, and technology… until now.
Steelhead Technologies, a Michigan-based tech startup located in the middle of the ‘rust belt’ of the United States of America, heard the cry for help from the surface finishing industry and designed a plant operating platform to elevate these job shops that support our supply chain.
“These service providers were managing many millions worth of revenue on outdated technology and paper forms that would constantly get lost on the production floor, halting progress and losing important customer information,” said Jeff Halonen, CEO. “Operators would waste tons of valuable time hunting around a busy warehouse just to find a part or piece of information. With Steelhead’s job shop software, they eliminate paper and can access their entire plant from the palm of their hand, saving five to six hours every day!”
Data visibility allows administrators and operators to effortlessly find parts, manage inventory, send quotes and invoices, automate customer communications, and monitor precise job costs. This enables critical insights such as profit margin analytics to equip General Managers and Owners with the right information to justify pricing or order quantities and transform profitability.
“Steelhead proved that for a certain part number, we lose money if we run 50,” explains Ken Hannem with D&K Powder Coating. “If we run 100, we hit our target margin. I took this information to the customer, and now they only send this part number in quantities of 100 or greater. This keeps their piece price down and our margins up! A true win-win.”
AI-driven capacity planning and scheduling offloads 40+ hours weekly in most environments and significantly reduces lead times—the time to receive, process, and ship parts—allowing job shops to process more parts, lightning fast. This frees up time to focus on sales and growth, or even take the vacation they have been planning for years but were too busy to take.
The biggest assumption most small to medium job shops make with an innovative solution built on cutting-edge technology is that it must be difficult to use and way out of budget. However, Steelhead Technologies designed a robust user interface so that any Operator off the street can learn how to use it in just 10 minutes. Steelhead can also be deployed in a matter of weeks with zero upfront costs or expensive setup fees.
“It was very easy to get taught. I was shown one time and in a matter of an hour I was able to use it [to move products] like I normally would,” said one Operator at Commercial Powder Coating.
The way to manage job shops of the future is by digitizing, automating, and optimizing workflows with Steelhead Technologies.