McKinstry relies on MSUITE to gain shop productivity insights and a deeper connection between VDC and Fabrication teams.
Overview
There’re many software solutions in the market that promise to eliminate waste out of your fabrication workflows. However, McKinstry is building the future and increasingly solving complex problems.
Driven by their passion for innovation, technological expertise, and a deep sense of responsibility to positively impact the environment and community, McKinstry has established a transformative reputation for building the future, and they’ve discovered prefab and manufacturing is the way.
After evaluating several “workflow productivity” solutions, they also partnered with MSUITE to take their fabrication operations to the next level.
MSUITE will help us effectively manage communication between the field, detailing, and shop teams. It will also help us understand our cost to perform work, informing future estimates
CJ Best
Director of Manufacturing | McKinstry
Situation Analysis
Team McKinstry set out to solve two challenges relating to improving fabrication shop productivity insights and gain a deeper connection between VDC and Fabrication teams. Fabrication shop leadership needed greater visibility on production to improve communication and productivity.
Industry Overall Goals
- — Improved insights into the productivity of our shop
- — A deeper connection between VDC and Fabrication teams
- — Remove the spooling bottleneck
- — Provide the field with an easier method for submitting and tracking orders
- — Coordinate multi-trade prefabrication with multiple contractors or multiple shops
Moving from Spreadsheet to Automation
Companies can say goodbye to Excel spreadsheets to track manual activities such as fractions of labor hours, worker shifts, completion dates, materials, quantities, and multiplier formulas to calculate estimates. MSUITE automates and provides predictive analytics to improve fabrication operations.
Productivity & Performance Features
After a review process, McKinstry selected MSUITE for helping it improve productivity tracking, status tracking, and demand forecasting for shop operations.
“We selected MSUITE because it provided the greatest fidelity into our shop operations and the strongest link between VDC and Fabrication teams,” said CJ Best Director Of Manufacturing at McKinstry.
Shop Workflow Intelligence
MSUITE enables McKinstry to Increase visibility, productivity, and accuracy in the shop by managing production as work moves from drawing approval through site receiving.
Streamline Communication
Whether it is the endless emails asking when things will be shipped or the drawing changes on the fly, MSUITE streamlines communications between office, shop, and field teams with real-time notification of things like approvals for fabrication, drawing markups, trucks leaving the shop, and more.
Leveraging BIM data for shop productivity
MSUITE enables McKinstry to leverage its BIM data to review shop productivity across several vantage points. Currently, fabricators understand that lbs./hr or diameter inches/hr are industry-standard metrics, but these metrics don’t always provide enough insight into fabrication shop operations.
For example, when fabricators are processing material that is cut & kit (commonly found on plumbing copper systems), diameters inches/hr make very little sense because none of the material is joined in the shop.
Configurable Workflows
MSUITE allows contractors like McKinstry to track all work based upon workflows that have a different number of stages. When the fab shop crew performs the job, they associate time with each stage (and the related material or joint). That data is connected to the work package, tied to the project.
These deep data connections allow contractors like McKinstry to better understand how fab shops are performing by setting a baseline for comparison benchmarks. Now, new investment, training, and process flow changes are tracked, giving McKinstry insight on whether those processes should be deployed across all shops or one shop at a time.
Customer-Focused Partnership
Contractors like McKinstry operate from a network of shops approach, where its capacity planning and workload allocation is synchronized across the Pacific Northwest.
Utilizing MSUITE can ensure project demands are met without confusion or missed opportunities – notably in tracking material and labor capabilities.
As fabrication processes continue to move towards automation, the insights provided by MSUITE are more crucial than ever for contractors to make informed capital investment decisions. Without this insight, construction firms are forced to rely on age-old metrics that don’t consider recent advancements in technology, networking, or human behavior.
Tech Helps McKinstry Do More For Clients
- — Better visibility into workflow allows them to optimize manufacturing schedules for guaranteed project schedules.
- — Tighter collaboration between detailing and manufacturing delivers higher quality and strict tolerance compliance.
- — Streamlined supply chain management lowers costs and delays for clients.
- — The ability to fabricate more equipment in their shop ultimately increases safety, quality and cost management.
