How Digitizing Processes Improved Results for Our Precision Machine Shop
It’s been a long time since KCSP Machine first opened its doors as Kansas City Screw Products – 78 years, to be exact. For an organization to last that long, KCSP Machine has had to do plenty right. Over the years, we’ve built strong, lasting relationships with customers based on our product quality, customer support, and reliability. But the world has also changed quite a bit over those seven decades, and we’re trying to evolve while keeping in place the values that have made KCSP successful so far.
Recently, we’ve focused on adopting some new software that’s already helped us improve our processes and results. We wanted to share how our recent upgrades will help our customers by allowing us to offer speedy delivery, quicker customer service, and faster quotes.
Streamlining Project Management to Improve Customer Service
Let’s start with the biggest example of our new digital processes. We’ve started using a new project management software, Asana, to make sure that all project statuses are digitally accessible, even off-premises. KCSP has used a whiteboard to track job progress, and it’s worked well enough. But as new ownership came in, we felt we needed to update this process to something more consistent and accessible for the years ahead.
If you come to visit our facility, you’ll now see a big TV in place of our whiteboard. This display uses our project management software to show project status in real-time, and we discuss the latest on each project every morning. With greater visibility, more accountability, and more frequent reminders of a project’s current status, this new digital process improves our ability to stay on top of delivery times and keep things from slipping through the cracks.
Faster Quoting and Faster Responses from Our Kansas City Machine Shop
The software does more than ensure project transparency. With this improved visibility into ongoing workload and requests, we’re able to get quotes back to customers faster than ever.
Not only that, once a project begins, customers are often looking to us for the latest updates on the status of their order to understand if it’s progressing on time. Previously, if we were at home or on the road, the whiteboard was out of sight. That made it tough to respond to requests quickly.
Now, if a customer asks a question while employees are off premises, we can still log in, check on a project’s status in real-time, and offer a timely answer to the inquiry. It’s made communication simpler for both employees and customers.
Capturing Seven Decades of Tribal Knowledge
Perhaps the biggest problem for an organization that’s lasted since 1946 is ensuring tribal knowledge remains in-house even when long-tenured employees move on or retire. Part of the solution to this is about company culture – our team emphasizes training to effectively communicate and preserve shop floor knowledge for the future.
Our digitization and process improvements are further steps to ensure this crucial knowledge is retained and more effectively communicated. With a new project management system, we’re able to get this information out of people’s heads and into a permanent, accessible system. We’ve had people at this company for 40 years who know amazing amounts about how KCSP operates; they are essential to keeping things running smoothly. When they’re ready to retire (God forbid!), we want to have an account of what they knew, so that we can continue to effectively and efficiently serve our customers.
It’s something we’re looking to do in every aspect of our business – keep the precision machining services running that have made KCSP Machine great for so long, all while we continue to grow and evolve the business into the future. If you want to hear more about how KCSP Machine has changed during our rebranding, get in touch with us or just request a quote to talk to us about your next project.