The order has arrived, but nobody has written it down anywhere yet
The big customer sends you an email saying there's a new order on the portal, you log in, download the PDF, and that's where the real office work starts, copying those lines into the business software you use, with your part numbers, your units of measure, your dates
Then the second customer comes along, with another portal, another format, another way of handling order revisions, and the same person does it all over again with a different set of rules in their head
Subcontracting works like that, and you're not the one who can change it
If you work for big clients you adapt to their systems, not the other way round, each one has its own portal and its own rules, and you don't have the bargaining power to make them change, not even when you're right
That adaptation work doesn't disappear though, you pay for it, in office hours, and they are hours that never show up on an invoice as production work
The number one problem is still the code table
The customer calls that part one thing, you call it another, and in between there's a person who knows the matches by heart, or an Excel file that person updates when there's time
It's solved with a conversion table between their codes and yours, plus the rules you decide, for example how the system behaves when a code doesn't exist yet, when the customer has changed the revision, or when two of their codes land on the same item of yours
What the system can do inside your working day
These are examples of what the system is able to do, not jobs already delivered to someone, it's only right that you know that first
- It logs into the client's portal with your credentials, checks whether there are new orders or changed lines, downloads the documents and files them where you keep them
- It reads the order PDF, converts the customer's codes into yours using the table, and enters the order into the business software you already use, quantities, delivery dates and prices included
- It prepares the order confirmation, comparing what the customer asked for with what you can actually deliver, and sets aside the lines that don't add up
- It types up the bill of materials for a new item from the sheet you were sent, instead of having someone rewrite it by hand line by line
- It fills in the delivery note (DDT) and uploads the progress to the customer's portal when production has closed the operation
- It keeps the item master data in line, so a new code doesn't get created twice with two different descriptions
It also works with programs that have no direct integration to the outside world, the system uses them from the screen the way a person would, and you can read about that in how it works on programs with no integrations
What you keep doing yourself
Production stays, which is the reason the customer chose you, and so do the technical decisions, how much material is needed, how the machine gets set up, whether that tolerance is feasible with the machines you have, whether that delivery date is a promise you can keep
The system decides none of this, and when it finds a code it doesn't know or a value that doesn't add up it doesn't invent one, it stops and leaves the case for you to look at
Why it's worth it, said without made-up numbers
The hours that go into copying today come back, and you use them to look after customers, to work out quotes, or simply to stop keeping a person parked in front of a portal
You don't have to replace your software, the system works on what you already have, whether that's business software like TeamSystem, Zucchetti, Passepartout Mexal or Arca, or the custom program someone wrote for you years ago that nobody wants to touch
How we start
I'm Antonio Fuccillo, I build the automations myself and I answer the messages myself, so you talk directly to the person who does the work, the office is in Nove, in the province of Vicenza, P IVA 04650850243
You show me a procedure, even just with a screen recording, I look at whether it can be done and I tell you the monthly fee before we start, that figure is agreed and put in writing, and you approve every addition yourself, you'll find the rest in how it works, or write to me from the contact page
The names of the programs mentioned on this page are trademarks of their respective owners, we name them only to make clear what kind of programs we mean, we have no relationship with the companies that make them and we don't sell their licenses