🎓 What can I do here?
From a high level, learn about how StartProto has set up our flexible manufacturing platform.
Learn about the core areas that must be configured to use StartProto.
Get a taste of how StartProto fits into a manufacturing operation.
See what inspired us to build this.
Introduction
At the highest level, StartProto is designed for anyone who takes physical materials, processes them, and makes new things (so, pretty much anyone who manufactures).
Our goal is to highlight what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, to who is responsible for getting it done. The system is designed to be intelligent- meaning that based on what you tell us, we are aiming to tell you the absolute best way to get things out the door in the time you have. At a birds-eye level, we look at your highest-priority order, calculate what needs to be done to get that out the door, move onto the second item (taking into account the first item’s claims), calculate that, and so on.
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Already have parts in inventory for that order? Cool, we’ll just tell your team to ship it out.
Have a new, high priority order that you need to have your team work on ASAP? No problem- just rearrange your priorities and the work list for the shop floor instantly rearranges.
Need to make a quick revision to a routing that’s already being worked on? Simply edit the “master part” and your team will immediately see the updates- no need to run out there to tell them.
For us to help you succeed, it’s important to understand the “philosophy” behind the system design. This overview is designed to give you some understanding so you are prepared to dive in and get started manufacturing better!
The Core
At the core, (most) everything in StartProto is centered around the concept of Demand. Demand is essentially the idea that you require a certain quantity of an Item- for example for a sales order that your shop has received.
The system then determines what needs to be done to meet that demand based on the current inventory and the Routing- essentially the recipe (what materials and steps are needed to obtain an Item).
How those requirements are determined? The system looks at three things:
What needs to be made?
How do we make it?
What has already been made?
What needs to be made?
Also known as Demand. This is pretty simple to determine. You simply need an existing item and a quantity of that item. There’s three ways to create this:
Add Sales Orders to your system
Pretty simple- your orders have line items that determine what itemneeds to be fulfilled, the quantity of the item, and the date that you need them by.
Minimum Stock Levels (coming soon)
This is useful for shops that want to keep items on hand - specify the amount of items you want to keep on hand and a restock quantity, and we do the rest.
Jobs (coming soon)
Want to trigger demand for items without setting a stock level or attaching it to an order? This is exactly the case that jobs will be built for.
Additionally, jobs will serve to give you a greater level of flexibility with generating demand- jobs can fulfill demand for sales order line items, meaning that you can better control what shows up for the floor to work on.
We designed demand to be flexible. For example make items (items you specify routings to make) aren’t the only things that have demand, buy items and tools can also have demand.
(Want to go in-depth on how to add demand through sales orders to the system? View this article: How To: Create a Sales Order)
How do we make it?
Like any good manufacturer, we care about how the precise way things are done. In this section, we outline the how & why behind specifying your item routings. These routings define in general how you obtain parts for an order in your system. For any item, there’s two ways that we can obtain it- we can either make it (so a make item) or purchase it (a buy item).
❗ Note that when we refer to make and buy items, we think of them almost as a template. Adding items on their own to the system will NOT trigger shop floor work, purchasing, shipping, etc.
Buy Items are pretty simple- specify what the item is, which vendors you buy it from, and the associated costs. These can be added to Purchase Orders.
Make Items are more complicated. Here is where you need to specify a routing. Think of a routing as a flow of operations (or steps) that parts go through to get to a final result.
As you’ll see later, these routings are also designed to be flexible. Multiple items and multiple quantities can be added to any step. And yes, make items can be inputs into other make items! Additionally, documentation can added to routings to make them show up exactly where you want it to.
(Want to go deeper on how routings are built? View this article: Building Effective Routings in StartProto)
What has already been made?
Let’s say you’ve defined what needs to be made and how you make it. All that is left for us is to determine the leastamount of work that needs to be done to do it. Generally, this flow looks like:
Do we have any of these items in inventory that we can use to fulfill this demand?
Do we have any WIP (work-in-progress) inventory that we can use for this?
Do we have any buy items we can process for this?
Do we have any purchase orders that we’re waiting to receive to fulfill this?
Obviously that is many things that are considered however all are tied around the idea of accurate inventory tracking.
❗ Inventory is simply the real-world existence of an item. Items on their own don’t exist in the real world- you have to make inventory for them!
Our system actually tracks more than just the buy and make item inventories- we also track WIP Items. WIP (or work-in-progress) is simply a way to track inventory that is in-between steps. Remember that routing diagram from above? Here is actually how we track this:
Applying this to Work Generation
Let's say we have a demand for 3 Make Items. Depending on the inventory of items there will be different things that we determine need to happen. Again, the idea is to determine ABSOLUTE minimum amount of work that we can do to fulfill the demand.
As you can see, inventory levels have large determination on what actions StartProto tells your team to do.
Starting Inventory Level | Work to be Done | Explanation |
Make Item: 3 | None! | We have enough inventory, so no work needs to be done. |
Make Item: 0 | 3x Step 1 | We have enough buy items to make this part, so all we need to do is do steps 1, 2 and 3. |
Make Item: 0 | 3x Step 2 | We’ve gone through and done step 1 (or told the system that we did 😉). We still need to do steps 2 and 3. |
Make Item: 0 | 3x Step 3 | We have WIP parts that have been processed through step 1 and step 2. All that is left for us to do is step 3. |
Make Item: 0 | Purchase 3x Buy Item | We don’t even have enough inventory to begin work, so we also need to trigger purchasing of the Buy Item. |
Make Item: 1 | 1x Step 2 | We have one make item in inventory- great! Additionally, we have some WIP part that need to be processed. We need to run one more part through Step 2, and then that part plus another through Step 3. |
Make Item: 0 | Purchase 1x Buy Item | So maybe we scrapped something and no longer have enough material… shoot. We need to go back and purchase 1 of the Buy Items, run it through Step 1, and then continue with the rest of our routing. |
(To learn more about how StartProto outputs the work schedule, view this article: How Work Is Generated)
(To learn about how inventory can be set in the system, view this article: Working With Inventory)
Telling Who to do What, When
Once we have the three critical questions answered, StartProto can now tell you what needs to be done! This concept is called Work Generation. There’s a few places where we will show you what needs to happen:
Purchasing
The purchasing list shows a list of buy items that can be added to purchase orders easily.
Shop Floor
The priority list shows your shop floor exactly what needs to be done right now. It is sorted so the highest priority items are at the top.
This is the beating heart of StartProto and where everyone out on the floor gets their work list. From here, shop-floor employees can update WIP as it moves through the shop, mark parts as scrapped, and contribute to documentation.
Shipping
The shipping list shows you what’s ready to be shipped out. Additionally you can print packing slips and track who shipped what out.
Additionally, there is one special case (can’t make it too easy, can we? 😇) The receiving list shows inventory from open purchase orders that can be received.
Interested in going deeper? View these helpful articles:
Making it Powerful
So far we’ve covered the core functionality of StartProto- you tell us what you need, how to do it, and how far you’ve made it, and we tell you what comes next. However, we’ve added additional features that help you focus on keeping machines running even more.
Scheduling with Intelligent Demand Priority
StartProto is designed around pull-based scheduling. Inventory is not constrained to a single order- meaning that if you have multiple orders for the same item and one becomes high priority, the parts are automatically adjusted to fulfill that order. Additionally, the order of work appearing in the priority list changes depending on your priorities as well- setting you up to instruct your team to just pull jobs from the top of their list.
Docs: Scheduling In StartProto
Accurate Costing & Quoting
Using routings and purchasing information, we make it easy to get both quote accurately and get historical costs. Routings let you add projected rates & time information, and sessions (work done by operators).
Docs: ~coming soon~
Documentation & Commenting
Give operators setup sheets, drawings, and more by either dropping it directly into their Shop Floor view or by attaching files. Many routing-related entities let you attach files and docs- meaning you can get these items to show up exactly where you want them to, when you want them to. Additionally, the comment interface lets shop floor users quickly communicate about orders, document machine setups, and more.
Record-Keeping
As we’ve built out StartProto, it’s became clear to us that having records of exactly what happened is important to manufacturers. We have built in ways to track historical inventory levels, shipping & receiving records, edits to orders, costing data, and more.
Who should use it?
StartProto has been designed so that way every employee that works in your organization can get benefit from it. In fact, the more cross-organizational usage, the more powerful the software becomes. Here’s a high-level overview of how StartProto can help different roles:
For Management:
Quick access- The WIP tracking system makes it easy to see where an order is at when customers call for updates.
Instant internal communication- In manufacturing, things are constantly in motion. Communicate changes instantly- for orders, for routings, for purchasing. All in one place.
Powerful data- When making business decisions, it is critical to have accurate, up-to-date information. For example, you can use historical data to make more accurate quotes, and see work history to better understand how your shop is operating.
Track financials- see the value of outstanding sales and purchase order, WIP, and more.
Peace of mind- know what is happening, when it happened, and who did it without venturing out of your office.
For Front Office:
Generate documents efficiently- generate qusotes, acknowledgements, packing slips and more instantly.
Purchase quickly- the purchasing list makes it easy to see what needs to be ordered.
Easily connect with vendors & customers- quote email generation & the web view portal makes it easy to send out a quote- and more portals are on their way.
For Shop Floor:
Track parts automatically- no need to count parts after hours of a run. Also, it’s easy to see what is coming up rather than WIP appearing at your station with no notice.
Immediate access to documentation- no need to interrupt anyone else to get that drawing.
Keep track of stuff for next time- being able to take photos of setups, and document critical callouts is huge next time you have to run that part.
Get recognized for your work- Comments make it easy to attribute who is going above and beyond to keep quality up and parts out of the scrap bin.
Ready to Get Started?
If so, awesome! To get your shop set up, we recommend starting here: Getting Started
A Last Reminder, and some Additional Resources
StartProto’s mission is to make it easy for anyone who makes stuff to have powerful software to automate their manufacturing business process at their fingertips. We were inspired by seeing the vast difference between the global auto manufacturers that our founders worked at and the reality that most manufacturers face in 2023.
💙 We heavily value feedback from users about how we can improve it- don’t be afraid to reach out either in-app or to [email protected]!
Our software is by no means finished- while currently we handle some basic functions, the eventual vision is to build a complete platform for continuous improvement- one where everyone in the organization is empowered and gets value out of using our tools. With that, we are trying to attack these high level problems:
How can we build software that is both useful and simple to use for people on the shop floor who constantly running machines?
How can we make it faster to get you the information you need right now?
What analytics tools and automations can we build that allow you to make better decisions faster?
Accessible software has improved the lives of people in many other industries- it’s time that manufacturers get the same.
Some Homework…
If you’re interested in learning more about the fundamental concepts that power our software, we recommend looking into the Theory of Constraints (ToC). This is an industrial engineering concept that focuses on eliminating bottlenecks and establishing flow within your manufacturing process. Here’s a few ways to learn:
1. Read this book- an easy, entertaining story that lays out how the ToC can be applied.
2. Read about it- we like the way this article is laid out.
3. Watch a video (there are plenty more, too)