What’s the best business decision you ever made? Sometimes as a small business owner, we
can get too set in our ways and become very blinkered in the way we view expansion. Despite
my kicking and screaming on many occasions, I knew that we had to make some enormous
strides in the way we operated our business in the growing world of technology. 24 years ago I
made my best business decision: I spent 6-percent of that year’s sales, and 100 percent of the profits and drove my company into the 21st century.
Fast forward to 2014. Because of that decision: I now have an 8-thousand-percent increase
in profits, four more companies in my portfolio with Delta Research being awarded as a “MMS
Top Shop 2014”. By embracing change, this is how I did it…
In 1989, I made the decision to purchase a manufacturing ERP system to help guide my business.
At the time, my company was a 10-person manufacturing supplier for the automotive industry.
After much research, I chose the REALTRAC Performance ERP system. I reached out to REALTRAC and learned the power of the job shop software from our sales representative, Don Colley. (Don is still with REALTRAC today). The return on this investment was realized in just 90 days.
To stay in business, profits must be earned. The REALTRAC ERP program helped guide us to
increased revenue with higher profits. REALTRAC improved our operational efficiency, reduced
costs, increased productivity and showed us where our opportunities for growth existed.
Efficiency comes from doing more of what’s most profitable in your business and less of
what’s least profitable. This analysis of our company was enlightening and gave us immediate
clarity in our direction.
Every customer is demanding. They all want a “Quality product, On time, Every time”. I run my
companies with this being the premise. We are built upon truth, integrity and honesty. We
take great pride in our quality. REALTRAC is a fast, real time system that helped us develop
our true employee and machine costing which in turn allowed us to estimate and quote more
effectively and efficiently.
With the machine loading software, we were able to track and manage jobs flowing through
our shop, which made us more operationally sound. It also gave us the confidence to win
more sales, buy more equipment and hire more staff. Our company continued on this path and
over the past 24 years the only thing that has not changed in our company was our software
system, REALTRAC.
This is a testament to its performance as it has stood the test of time. But companies need
to stay fresh and owners strategies and plans must address new technologies, equipment and
opportunities as they emerge or risk being left behind. It is becoming ever more apparent
in the manufacturing industry that businesses must have a job shop tracking system. Shops
without these tracking systems cannot receive industry certifications such as ISO or AS and
risk losing business to competitors that do or simply will go out of business. Realtrac’s Shop
Management System is the perfect solution for a quick and easy to use software platform to
offer manufacturers Real-Time visibility into all of their operations.
The Realtrac Shop Management System was built in the early 1980s by a machine shop owner
and was designed exclusively for machine shops, job shops and make to order manufacturers.
The Realtrac software development team still resides in the heart of a machine shop where
additions and adaptations are being designed and tested daily. This allows Realtrac to be
continuously evolving within the industry while delivering software that is faster, even more
powerful and easier to use. “Easy is quick, quick is profitable”! Whether you’re a start-up shop
or have a mature business model, Realtrac will help you.
The Realtrac team has created a platform that allows our business to run the software
instead of allowing it to run us. They have created a completely integrated, state-of-the-art
manufacturing ERP system that allows companies a quick and easy transition while reducing
the stress related to their daily business.
"REALTRAC assists with our entire operation, from management to inventories to
implementation. It also plays a significant role in improving our business efficiencies by
reducing our costs and optimizing our business’s performance. I firmly believe that with
REALTRAC at the helm, your company will soar to new heights and may earn a Top Shop Award in the near future as well."
Bob Sakuta. Owner, Delta Family of Companies, MMS Top Shop Award 2014, “Machining Technology”“Top Shops” is a comprehensive benchmarking program for machine shops of all types and
sizes. Using data from surveys completed by a number of machining businesses, Top Shops
identifies optimal shopfloor practices as well as operational and business metrics that define
world-class competitiveness in discrete parts manufacturing. Companies ranging from small
job shops to large captive operations can see how they compare against the country’s
leading machining businesses, which enables them to make sound decisions to emulate those
identified as top-performing operations. Not only does the benchmarking data serve as a
baseline “report card” of sorts for them, but it eliminates the need for shop executives to rely
on gut feelings as a method of identifying and prioritizing improvement efforts.
To learn more about ‘What it takes to be a Top Shop’: http://www.mmsonline.com/zones/topshops
To learn more about ‘Realtrac Shop Management System’: http://realtrac.com/
To learn more about ‘Delta Research Corporation’: http://www.delrecorp.com/
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