Is Something MISsing At Your Shop?

I WAS amazed to learn that only 42 percent of in-plants have shop management software. I then got down from my high horse and remembered the not-so-distant past when the shop that I manage was part of that statistic.

Like many small in-plants we had a homegrown system that relied upon Microsoft Excel, carbonless forms, chalkboards and the memory of our employees. While it sufficed for years, the two-day drudgery of generating the end-of-the-month chargeback reports for our controller’s office was reason alone for me to begin investigating management information systems (MIS), knowing in the back of my mind that we couldn’t afford one and that I couldn’t sell it to upper management.