Shop talk with Dean Wiltshire, owner of Boulder’s Colorado Teardrops.
How long have you been using Parts Dashboard? We have been a customer of Parts Dashboard since Spring of 2017.
How does Parts Dashboard help your business? We have many, many parts that go into our 4 different models of Teardrop Trailers and their options! It’s been unruly to manage through spreadsheets. Parts Dashboard helps us manage all parts that go into our Teardrops for ordering, inventory and forecasting. Additionally, Parts Dashboard helped us understand what last year’s tariffs and price increases of steel, aluminum and plywood did to our overall “cost of goods” so we were able to raise our prices in 2019 to manage those fluctuating material costs without overcharging our customers (thus losing potential customers), nor lowering our gross margins.
How does Parts Dashboard drive efficiencies in your facility? We practice Lean Manufacturing and it’s critical for us to have the parts on the shelves when we start a customer build. As we sell and schedule a Teardrop build, we drag and drop that customers order against our inventory and it tells us what we need to buy in parts! Versus buying too many parts, thus affecting our cashflow or too little parts and affecting our delivery dates.
What is the best feature within the Parts Dashboard platform? Forecasting against inventory allows us to drive cashflow models and keep our lean manufacturing process in motion!
Did you use any other systems in the past? If so, why did you choose Parts Dashboard? We used spreadsheets and they were unruly to manage. Parts Dashboard learned our business processes and showed us how to best use the software to fit our process.
Who would you recommend Parts Dashboard to? Any small to medium manufacturing organization practicing lean manufacturing!
If you’d like a demonstration of Parts Dashboard, you can reach us here.