March 17, 2010
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Project ManagementMinimize

What is Project management? Many things!

Eliminate bottlenecks. Manage both job and resource schedules.

  • Scheduling
  • Purchasing
  • Documentation
  • Time collection for payroll

Manage your job schedules, production, shop and dispatching of installation crews, all with one, easy to use system.

What kind of scheduling do fabricators need?

The most obvious list might include:

  • Assign people to the work at hand: both shop work and installation
    • Multiple crews and multiple jobs
  • Manage equipment time
  • Organize project schedules – “to do” lists
    • Schedule work per week and anticipate future commitments
    • Fabricators often have jobs where one set of tasks in completed in one time period (fabrication) then another set of tasks is completed in another time period (installation)
  • Determine capacity to take on new work

More advanced functions might include:

  • Track employee time against hours budgeted
  • Analyze actual vs. budgeted production by type of project and other factors
  • Determine throughput and factors for process improvement
  • Integrate data with other production systems

Why haven’t these needs been met?

  • Manufacturing-type schedules
    • Feed info in, spits out a schedule: designed for machines making the same parts over and over.
    • Do not work because you need more flexibility: dealing with custom jobs and customers on pre and post production.
  • Construction, Gantt chart-type schedules
    • Designed big jobs and many steps
    • Assume the tasks will run basically continuously, one finishes and then the next one starts. You may have many tasks separated by several days or even weeks.
    • These systems are often complex and take many weeks to learn and use
  • Dispatching scheduling doesn’t work
    • Existing dispatch boards may work OK for assigning work to crews, but these are generally limited in functions and to not have the depth to really do the job
    • Do not work well for fabrication/installation jobs with multiple tasks

What is possible now with zScheduler?

  • Know exactly what project tasks will need to be accomplished and the timing for each
  • Easily dispatch and assign not only crews, but also equipment and sub-contractors
  • Be confident that you can take on more work without getting into a bind with overbooking
  • Learn more and more about your company’s productivity by tracking budgeted vs. actual time for different crews and different types of jobs, so you can adjust future jobs for more profitability

zScheduler: The best system available for fabricators

  • Developed specifically for sub-contractor and fabricator industries. Schedule002.jpg
  • Created from many years of experience of the fabrication industry and with the help of leading fabricators, this is an amazing system.
  • It has both job and resource schedules and provides flexible scheduling in multiple formats.
  • It is tightly integrated with Sage Master Builder  
  • There is simply nothing else like it available anywhere else.

zScheduler: the easiest scheduler to learn and use

  • Learn this system in a couple of hours
  • Simple to use and does project scheduling and dispatching.
  • How do you keep your schedules up to date?
    • You can update manually update or have them automatically update from a time data collection system
  • Compare estimated to actual and factor for accuracy

What should you do now?

Call for a demo

Buy it now

No risk guarantee.

  • Try zScheduler risk free for 30 days.
  • We are confident that you will be amazed at how much easier it is use compared to manual or other traditional Gantt chart type scheduling systems.
  • Prove to yourself how much time you can save producing schedules and assigning work to employees and equipment.
  • Your biggest risk is doing nothing and using less efficient systems, wasting countless hours and a lot of money.

Guaranteed ease of use.

  • Schedulers can learn how to do complete, multi-activity jobs in a couple of hours.
  • Absolutely the fastest and easiest scheduling tool you can use for the type of multi-job, multi-task schedules you need to do.

How do you manage purchasing?

  • Purchasing and inventory management can take an enormous amount of time and is not often accounted for. Don’t lose money on jobs by wasting it on inefficient purchasing practices.

Why haven’t these needs been met?

  • Most fabricators use manual systems to do purchasing, paper forms, which are labor intensive to fill-in and track.
  • Bill paying is not linked to orders, except by manual review and is prone to errors resulting in overpayments or more time to straighten out the mess.

What is possible now with zEstimator and Master Builder?

  • From zEstimator, you can automatically produce purchase orders for materials. Then, in Master Builder, you can track those orders and automatically pull them up for payment, saving much time and many errors.

What are your documentation needs?

You may not think you need recorded documentation, until you find yourself in a dispute and need to prove your position. Then, those with the best documentation usually win.

Why haven’t these needs been met?

  • Paper systems basically work, in terms of documenting a job, but they take a lot of time to keep up and so sometimes important documents are not prepared or are misplaced.
  • Construction-type documents are not available from MRP (manufacturing) software systems.
  • Having to enter the same information numerous times is a tedious and disheartening task.
  • It is again, labor intensive, to get reports, usually with data manually entered into spreadsheets.

What is possible now with zEstimator and Master Builder?

Master Builder

  • Produces, maintains and tracks production documents – critical for project success:
    • Requests for information: to clarify plans or customer information
    • Submittals: to gain approval for suggested product substitutions
    • Transmittals: documenting what is sent and to whom
    • Punch lists: to do lists for jobs
    • Daily field reports: reports from field supervisors
    • Budgets: as a basis of your job costing
    • Bill of materials: for inventory picking
    • Work orders: a directives for crews
    • Reports, such as:
      • Scheduled hours by task and employee
      • Committed costs
      • Percent complete for jobs
      • Cost to complete for jobs
      • Hours to complete for jobs
      • Job cost labor reports
  • Produces, maintains and tracks subcontractor business documents
    • Preliminary lien information and notices
    • Change orders: most important to document approval and billing
    • Progress billing: billing for partial completion on larger job
    • Certified payroll: essential for government work
    • And many other similar necessary documents
  • Produces, maintains and tracks general construction documents

    Many cabinet and fabrication companies also do construction work. This system easily manages construction documentation
    • Subcontracts
    • Subcontract change orders
    • Plan records: documentation of plan revisions sent
    • Secondary payees with joint checks

What should you do now?

Call for a demo

Buy it now

How do you collect employee time?

  • TracManager - from Tractivity,
  • This software management system processes and reports activity and process costs for jobs, projects, or products so that effective action can be taken to improve profitability.
  • Read more...

What should you do now?

Call for a demo

Buy it now

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