Case study · Precision manufacturing

The whole business
was running out of
one man's head.

Toomey NC · CNC machining · Billet performance parts · Queensland
Damien Toomey, manufacturing · Mary Toomey, operations

Two CNC machines, growing faster than the systems holding it together. Which was a problem, because there weren't any. The bills of materials, the part numbers and the reorder points all lived in one person's memory.

2 weeks
from first call to running on real data
$50k to $60k
what off-the-shelf quoted to implement, before the yearly subscription
6+
trial versions downloaded, none of them a fit
Overnight
a case lodged at 8.30pm, fixed by six the next morning
01 — What changed

One person's memory, replaced by a system anyone can open.

Before

  • Bills of materials, part numbers and reorder points held in Damien's memory
  • Purchase orders sent to anodising with no record of what went out or who it was for
  • Enquiries arriving by Instagram, Facebook, email, website and phone, with no single record
  • Mary unable to move a job forward without going through Damien
  • The books left until tax time, then untangled in a rush

After

  • Multi-level BOMs, reorder points and job history in a system anyone can open
  • Every order on the screen, tied to its sales order or held against stock
  • Every enquiry in one pipeline, traceable to the quote and the work orders beneath it
  • Mary runs quoting, purchasing and invoicing. Damien stays on the machines
  • A tax return answered out of the system, with questions instead of a reconstruction

I downloaded six or more trial versions of different things. And I thought, this is stupid. So I gave up.

Damien Toomey · Toomey NC · On searching for an off-the-shelf system
02 — Why they moved

The driver wasn't efficiency. It was risk.

Toomey NC machines billet intake manifolds, plenums, fuel rails and runners across two CNC machines. It has been growing faster than the systems holding it together. Which was a problem, because there weren't any.

They had already gone looking. A year earlier Damien went hunting for a system that handled work orders and multi-level bills of materials. He downloaded six or more trial versions. None of them did it, so he gave up. The ones that came close started at fifty to sixty thousand to implement, plus a subscription every year after.

The driver wasn't efficiency. It was risk. Everything the business knew sat with one person. Mary couldn't take an order and get it moving on her own. Nobody could be hired without Damien teaching them the whole operation from scratch. And the volume was only going one way.

03 — How it ran

A working demo before the first call. Live at the end of week two.

  1. Days 1 to 3
    A working demo, built before the first call.

    Not slides. Damien spent the session correcting how the requirements run needed to behave in his shop. Rebuilt with his changes two days later, with pricing in the same session.

  2. Week 1
    Set up under their own accounts.

    Cloudflare hosting, GitHub, Google sign-in, domain and the MYOB connection, all in Toomey NC's name from day one.

  3. Week 2
    Discovery, then build, then review the next day.

    Sessions with Damien on manufacturing and scheduling, with Mary on quoting, invoicing and reconciliation.

  4. Go live
    Real data, real jobs, end of week two.

    Inventory imported by spreadsheet using Damien's own part numbering, not ours.

  5. Weeks 3 to 8
    Refinement, included in the price.

    Weekly sessions. Changes raised in the morning were often in the platform by the afternoon.

04 — What we built

The enquiry, the machine and the books, on one thread.

  • Front of house

    • Enquiry pipeline fed by the website, plus manual logging for Instagram and phone
    • Quotes with an accept link. The customer accepts, the sales order creates itself

  • Manufacturing

    • Multi-level BOMs, made and bought separated, colour variants as their own codes
    • Requirements run showing on hand, on order, committed and still to make

  • Shop floor

    • Scheduling by resource across both machines and assembly, flagged if overdue
    • Gates stopping assembly being scheduled before its machining

  • Back office

    • Purchase orders batched by supplier, emailed from the platform
    • MYOB integration with synced numbering and paid status flowing back

We're lodging a case at 8.30 at night, and I wake up at six in the morning and it's fixed. I've never seen help desk service like that anywhere in the IT world.

Mary Toomey · Toomey NC

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