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7 signs your digital manufacturing system is too much for your shop
Manufacturing software should remove friction from production. It should make it easier to see job status, control work in process, deliver current instructions, document quality, and respond when schedules change. Yet a system can promise all of that and still be too much for the plant expected to use it.
“Too much” does not mean the software has many features or costs more than a spreadsheet. It means the total burden of buying, implementing, maintaining, and using the system is greater than the value it creates for your operation. A global enterprise may reasonably need extensive governance and configuration. A 75-person job shop may need a focused production system that solves its worst information problems quickly and grows in stages.
This list is a companion to our discussion of time and cost savings in production. It looks at the other side of the decision: how to recognize when a digital manufacturing system demands too much money, setup time, complexity, or functionality for the problems your shop needs to solve.