Originally Published as: Automation’s Silent Partner: Why Software is the Overlooked Key to Modern Rollforming Efficiency
Anthony Martin is the Manager and Product Development Lead at Paragon Computing Solutions. Paragon Computing Solutions LLC, including Paradigm ERP, is a leading software solution provider for rollforming businesses and building materials supply and light metal manufacturing markets.
If you’ve ever been in charge of running a business, even just for a day, then you know how many deadlines, tasks, and projects you might have to juggle, handle, or complete. For those in the building materials and metal manufacturing markets, the timeliness, precision, and weight of tight deadlines are ever-important, as the outcome of each task can directly impact your organization’s success or failure. This is especially true in the rollforming industry, where efficiency and accuracy are critical to staying competitive.
Consider the steps involved in processing a seemingly simple panel order:
- Beginning with the salesperson, who must gather accurate details from the customer, including panel profile, gauge, color, length, and shipping information.
- Next, the salesperson must verify coil availability for the requested color and gauge, confirm that sufficient machine capacity exists to meet the order shipping deadline, and calculate an accurate price for the order.
- Once the order is confirmed, the process transitions to the production floor.
- Here, operators must identify the correct coil and select the appropriate machine to produce the specified profile.
- After production, shipping personnel are responsible for loading the correct materials and ensuring timely delivery to the right jobsite.
- Finally, office staff must issue the invoice and follow up to collect payment.
If a mistake occurs at any point in this process, the consequences can be serious—ranging from customer dissatisfaction to lost profits, or both.
Errors can include incorrect order details or pricing by sales, using the wrong coil or profile in production, shipping the wrong items, delivering to the wrong location, or failing to issue an invoice altogether. All of which could lead to disastrous consequences down the line for the order or for your business.
Given that every step must be executed with precision for every order, it becomes clear just how complex and demanding it is to run a successful rollforming business.
Most rollforming businesses invest carefully in their production equipment; prioritizing having reliable rollformers, folding machines, forklifts, and more is a great first step towards efficiency and automation. While there is no question that high-quality, automated machinery is essential to a thriving rollforming business, who or what can you trust to guide and support an entire order from initial entry to final delivery?
In the early stages, it’s very common for rollforming businesses to rely on paper order forms, Excel spreadsheets, and basic accounting software. But when order volumes grow with your business, these tools begin to falter.
The good news is that there are software solutions specifically designed for the rollforming industry: systems with built-in features that automate many of the critical steps required to process and fulfill orders successfully, allowing your business to grow without sacrificing accuracy, potential profit, and, most importantly, customer satisfaction.
When it comes down to it, software automation is the glue that holds your entire business together.
After all, your forklift is only as good as the person driving it, and for the future of your business, that person better know where and why they’re driving it.
Some of the key areas where software automation can greatly benefit a business include:
Automated Pricing
While the process of quoting an accurate price to a customer may appear simple on the surface, it rarely is. Multiple factors can affect a product’s price, including the type of product, quantity ordered, and the type of customer (for example, contractors may qualify for special pricing due to the volume of business they do with a supplier, while a homeowner may be quoted a higher retail price). A pricing process where your salesperson needs to look up unit prices in price lists or spreadsheets, calculate the total amount, and manually apply discounts can be error-prone and slow. A software system that can perform all the price lookups and calculations for the salesperson increases the accuracy of the pricing information provided to the customer, as well as reducing the time required to generate a price quote.
Coil Inventory
If the correct color and gauge of a coil is not available to produce an order, not only does the business risk losing an individual sale, but it also risks losing future business when the customer shops elsewhere for that product. Software can help reduce this risk by tracking the on-hand quantity of coil inventory and automatically updating the on-hand quantity when coil is used to manufacture panels and trims. Accurate on-hand inventory allows purchasers to replenish inventory in a timely manner to avoid out-of-stock scenarios and allows salespeople to assure the customer that their order can be fulfilled in a timely manner.
Custom Trim Drawing
Custom trims can be challenging to both price and produce correctly. Not only must the total width of the trim be calculated, but other information, such as the number of hems and bends, segment lengths, and angles, must also be recorded. Trim drawing software can significantly reduce this complexity by allowing the salesperson or even the customer to draw the exact profile. Once the profile is known, software can calculate the price and even transmit the profile to the folding machine.
Change Orders
Change Orders are inevitable when dealing with building materials, but they can also be highly disruptive without software connecting the office to the shop floor. When automated software systems are in use and a customer contacts the office and changes the color for their panel order, it can be as simple as a few keystrokes, and both the office and shop instantly have the updated information. Without this level of automation, change orders can require salespeople to print updated copies of the order and then find and replace the prior order paperwork. If all copies of the paperwork are not updated, someone may attempt to produce or fulfill the order with the wrong material.
Rollformer and Trim Brake Machine Integrations
Anytime data must be entered into a system, there is the possibility of error. Software specifically designed for the rollforming industry includes automated integrations that allow order data, such as quantity, length, and profile, to be transmitted to rollformers and trim brakes. This automation eliminates data re-entry errors. Order accuracy can also be improved by utilizing coil validation. Coil validation requires an operator to scan a coil tag prior to producing an order. When the coil tag is scanned, the software automatically verifies that the coil matches the gauge and color of the coil required to produce the order. Preventing orders from being produced from the wrong material can quickly result in substantial savings.
Fulfillment and Proof of Delivery Verification
Another process that can quickly become time-consuming is when a customer contacts the supplier because they are missing materials on their order. Software systems that require product barcodes or pack labels to be scanned as product is loaded onto trucks can verify that all the products for an order have been loaded, and delivery photos taken when an order is delivered can provide proof that the material was delivered, and where it was delivered. If this information is readily available when a customer questions their delivery, confirmation that the product was on a delivery truck and easy access to a photo of the delivered product can provide proof that the customer received their product and help them locate it. The key to collecting this information is having systems in place that prompt the creation and access of this information with a minimal amount of effort.
Software Solutions
While implementing systems to introduce or increase automation requires an investment in time and software, and some short-term disruption is to be expected while employees adapt to a new system, the return on the investment can be rapid and substantial. If the growth of your business is hindered by inefficiency, software automation may be the catalyst to propel you to the next stage of growth!
