Thanks for the excellent suggestions. Oddly enough, the last one www.bigpicture.net made the most sense, as i simply cannot stand all the IT talk this late in the day. Even without the actual examples, it's a pretty clear-cut idea of how to lay out a good workflow for a small to medium shop. I'm currently working with Bear to implement some basic lean management into our shop (stuff like cleanup supplies at every station). Modern Machine Shop did a great cover story awhile back on lean management for the small machine shop, which had some good ideas.

Why am I going on about lean management in this post? Well, I think LM is important to the overall Workflow matrix. A shop can waste a lot of time looking for tooling or materials or even a broom to sweep up chips, which eliminates the time/efficiency process inherent in a good Workflow.

Anyway, I'm going to dive into this particular site and see what we can use - we'll see what comes of it. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, if anybody out there has anything currently implemented, would love to hear about it. Bear in mind, we are a custom shop so things work a bit differently than with CNC. Thanks!

Anita