Area Tool & Manufacturing, Inc. Increases Quoting Speed by 300% with Paperless Parts

Background

Just 40 miles from Lake Erie in Meadville, Pennsylvania, you’ll find Area Tool & Manufacturing, Inc., an ISO 9001:2015 certified precision machine shop that provides CNC machining, wire EDM, sinker EDM, and surface grinding services with a focus on low-volume projects.

Established in 1976, Area Tool & Manufacturing, Inc. is a proud member of NTMA (the National Tooling & Machining Association), a close partner to Paperless Parts. Led by second-generation shop owner Ashleigh Wehrle, the 20,000-square-foot climate-controlled shop is equipped with the latest technology solutions that help ensure exceptional quality, equitable pricing, and timely delivery.

Challenge

Area Tool & Manufacturing, Inc. struggled to keep up with the number of quote requests coming into the shop. Their pen-and-paper system was inefficient at best, and Ashleigh knew they were losing opportunities due to their lengthy response times.

Upon the passing of Area Tools’ founder, Ashleigh’s father, she was faced with both the challenge and opportunity to embrace new technology to gain efficiencies. “Figuring out how and which technologies to implement didn’t go so well in the beginning!” says Ashleigh.

Despite investing in job management software, the team at Area Tool & Manufacturing, Inc. still struggled to manage the quoting process, finding the software complex to set up and unwieldy for daily integration. They knew they needed a solution that would streamline the quoting process and help forge trust among new and legacy clients.

Solution

Through NTMA, Ashleigh was introduced to Paperless Parts. She was immediately impressed with the team’s industry involvement. “Meeting your team has been so important to me,” Ashleigh says. That initial meeting prompted her to explore Paperless Parts as a solution for Area Tool & Manufacturing, Inc.

Ashleigh introduced her team to Paperless Parts, and they quickly fell in love with the software’s easy usability and seamless integration options. They were particularly excited to find that “Paperless Parts is committed to making sure the software does what we need instead of trying to make us fit the software.” As Ashleigh explains, “Paperless Parts fits a lot of different styles of job shops because even though we’re all in manufacturing, we are all very, very different.”

“The ability for Paperless Parts to seamlessly integrate with JobBOSS was mission critical for us to achieve our expectations from an efficiency standpoint. It would have been counterproductive to implement the improved efficiencies offered by Paperless Parts while sacrificing efficiencies from a shop floor management perspective,” said Ashleigh.

“The team at Paperless Parts did the research and delivered upon their offering of a full JobBOSS integration. There is a difference between offering vs. delivering and Paperless Parts proved successful on both accounts.”

Paperless Parts had an immediate impact on Area Tool & Manufacturing, Inc., saving the shop significant hours per week with streamlined quotes and seamless customer communication. “I can drop in our quotes; I can drop in materials; it’s all collective,” Ashleigh raves. “And I’m not scrolling through 42 emails trying to find a plating quote.”

The precision machine shop’s customers have also been thrilled with Paperless Parts. “Our customers love the way it looks!” says Ashleigh. “We used to send a nice little email with a quote attached, but people love the experience that Paperless Parts gives them. The feedback from our customers has been phenomenal.”

Ashleigh shares, “I’ve seen what happens when a shop doesn’t have a growth plan in place and how that lack of foresight really puts the business at risk.” Thanks to Paperless Parts, quoting turnaround time is dramatically faster, allowing Area Tool & Manufacturing, Inc. more time to invest in business growth, from customer care to shop advancements.

Results

Now fully integrated with Paperless Parts, Area Tool & Manufacturing, Inc.:

1. Increases quoting speed by 300%. “I’m not exaggerating when I tell you it used to take us a week to submit a quote,” admits Ashleigh, “and now we commonly quote same-day—two days at most if, for example, we’re waiting on a very specific custom plating quote from a manufacturing partner.”
2. Enhances client relationships. Ashleigh explains, “Paperless Parts has improved my overall relationship with my customer because I’m creating efficiencies for them, which in turn helps their bottom line. Our customers have always trusted our quality and product, but our front-end was muddled. Now the front-end matches the back-end. And it’s made our relationships with our customers so much better.”
3. Gains the support of the entire Paperless Parts team. “The Paperless Parts team spends a lot of time working on our business,” says Ashleigh. “We’re always working in our business, but it’s not often that we get to work on our business. And to me, the relationship with Paperless Parts is how we work on our business every day.”