True Joinery ltd
New member
What software do fellow joinery owners use to manage projects in the workshop.
Project management
- Thread starter True Joinery ltd
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Although I can't contribute with an answer, I am very curious to see the responses to your question @True Joinery ltd. Just for clarification (forgive if it is a stupid question), what do you mean by "manage projects"? Would it be manage the tasks order and utilization of your machinery/tools? Schedule? Costs? Client orders and invoices? Design management?
I am truly curious because this is somewhat my field outside woodworking.
I am truly curious because this is somewhat my field outside woodworking.
True Joinery ltd
New member
Basically am after something to make it easier keeping track of what jobs we have on going, scheduling work and who's doing what.
Phill05
Established Member
I always used Excel spreadsheets but maybe that is out of date now.
Etaf
Established Member
you could use excel , otherwise a project management tool - which you may have to payfor
Microsoft Project was always the goto when i was working , but often people just used excel
There are free versions of excel as well. Numbers is free on Apple products , otherwise openoffice , libreoffice and a few others for windows
With Gantt charts if required and dependancies and milestones - I made a few back when i was working as a PM, can be quite complicated & detailed if required
i do a lot of work on the excel forums , so happy to help - not sure if can just continue on this thread ........
Microsoft Project was always the goto when i was working , but often people just used excel
There are free versions of excel as well. Numbers is free on Apple products , otherwise openoffice , libreoffice and a few others for windows
There should be quite a few templates for excel available to manage that , even adaptation of some of the building excel templates for example
With Gantt charts if required and dependancies and milestones - I made a few back when i was working as a PM, can be quite complicated & detailed if required
i do a lot of work on the excel forums , so happy to help - not sure if can just continue on this thread ........
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True Joinery ltd
New member
All of the above
Agent_zed
Established Member
I find excel too fiddly to keep things up to date and MS project is too indepth for simple work planning.
In between the 2 is MS planner. It's very similar to JIRA or Monday, which are all 'Kanban' type tools https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban
You just have tickets for each job and can update and move them between columns. You can choose what your columns are called. You can assign tickets to people and when you add a comment you'll get a notification.
I am not one for spending a lot of time on the planning/management side of things (I hate spending 2x as long filling out forms than doing the work) but I've found MS planner to be just right for me.
In between the 2 is MS planner. It's very similar to JIRA or Monday, which are all 'Kanban' type tools https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban
You just have tickets for each job and can update and move them between columns. You can choose what your columns are called. You can assign tickets to people and when you add a comment you'll get a notification.
I am not one for spending a lot of time on the planning/management side of things (I hate spending 2x as long filling out forms than doing the work) but I've found MS planner to be just right for me.
I agree with @Agent_zed that MS Project (and Primavera P6 or any of these heavy-weight Gantt-based software) is "too indepth for simple work planning". For individual projects under, lets say half a million pounds, they are simply not very cost-effective IMHO. The amount of work you have to setup and manage each project individually will not pay-off.
To be honest, from what I understand of your description @True Joinery ltd , you are looking more for an Operations Management solution rather than a Project Management solution. I don't know the size of your operations and if it would justify a custom-made ERP (enterprise resource planning) solution, but for a small to medium size operation MS-Planer or Monday could be a good option, as Agent_zed mentioned. I wouldn't dismiss Excel, however, as it is a very powerful tool on the right hands, in particular for the cost management.
To be honest, from what I understand of your description @True Joinery ltd , you are looking more for an Operations Management solution rather than a Project Management solution. I don't know the size of your operations and if it would justify a custom-made ERP (enterprise resource planning) solution, but for a small to medium size operation MS-Planer or Monday could be a good option, as Agent_zed mentioned. I wouldn't dismiss Excel, however, as it is a very powerful tool on the right hands, in particular for the cost management.
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Likewise. Unless your "projects" are very different and very high value / consequence to your business, they aren't really projects and don't need to be managed as such.
You need tools to manage your day to day operations efficiently. Lean, kanban, etc are the places to look. Simple visual management. Enough monitoring of job costs to know where you are wasting money or not charging enough.
You need tools to manage your day to day operations efficiently. Lean, kanban, etc are the places to look. Simple visual management. Enough monitoring of job costs to know where you are wasting money or not charging enough.
True Joinery ltd
New member
Ok brilliant thankyou
Hi @True Joinery ltd, you can use a spreadsheet software such as MS Excel or similar alternatives from Google or OpenOffice. This can get cumbersome depending on the size/volume of your projects and how technical you are or want to be with Excel.
You can check Trello and Jira which both offer free tier services I believe.
Have you tried a large whiteboard where you can list ongoing jobs and then give each some status, ie wood ordered or waiting for customer feedback etc.
I gather you are a small business, you don't want to tie yourself up in software but something simple and then put the effort into the doing.
I gather you are a small business, you don't want to tie yourself up in software but something simple and then put the effort into the doing.
Don't underestimate the impact that good organisation and operational management can have on any business, even small. The lean champions all made a hell of a difference to the businesses where I've worked and the analysis and improvements were often at the level of production cells the same or smaller than a lot of small businesses.
Etaf
Established Member
yep, i implemented whiteboards across the UK and management control reviews for various outlets as part of a large change/improvement programme
Not directly applicable here, but when we ran our own business, most of the jobs that we were doing followed a similar structure. Consequently, each job could be described by a row on an Excel spreadsheet and each milestone (or whatever) of the project could be described on that row with a simple traffic light system. Costs, projected sales and revenues could be entered within the row too. With this approach lots of projects could easily be monitored from initial quotation right through to payment in the bank and, with simple spreadsheet math, forecasting, revenue per lead or marketing source and a host of other financials could be dynamically visualised.
This is probably overkill for just a few jobs. At any one time we could have 100 plus jobs in pipeline, sometimes double that. The spreadsheet developed over time, starting off simple and growing in features. Over the time that we ran our business it saved us close to £100,000 .... and kept us sane!
This is probably overkill for just a few jobs. At any one time we could have 100 plus jobs in pipeline, sometimes double that. The spreadsheet developed over time, starting off simple and growing in features. Over the time that we ran our business it saved us close to £100,000 .... and kept us sane!
Terry - Somerset
Established Member
Many years ago I was involved with a collaboration between a number of public sector bodies - local authorities, police, government agencies etc - to set up and share a common administrative, accounting, procurement etc service centre running common software.
The savings in software development and support costs, staff, etc seemed overwhelming until I started to look a little more deeply and realised that benefits would only flow if we modified the way we worked to conform to the collaboration standard.
Why mention this - getting our own systems in proper order first meant the benefits of joining a consortium would be very limited, or possibly illusory. We would retain control over future direction rather than being reliant on consensus with other partners.
The first step to improving project management should be to ensure the manual systems you use at present are properly documented/understood, appropriate to the business, and any obvious changes required implemented.
When you select the IT or other systems to support the business, there will be clarity over what is actually required - or you may spend a lot of time and effort on the unnecessary or overly complex.
The savings in software development and support costs, staff, etc seemed overwhelming until I started to look a little more deeply and realised that benefits would only flow if we modified the way we worked to conform to the collaboration standard.
Why mention this - getting our own systems in proper order first meant the benefits of joining a consortium would be very limited, or possibly illusory. We would retain control over future direction rather than being reliant on consensus with other partners.
The first step to improving project management should be to ensure the manual systems you use at present are properly documented/understood, appropriate to the business, and any obvious changes required implemented.
When you select the IT or other systems to support the business, there will be clarity over what is actually required - or you may spend a lot of time and effort on the unnecessary or overly complex.
Adam W.
A Major Clanger
Have you thought of Last Planner and the BVC system ?
Costs nothing and is simple to use.
Costs nothing and is simple to use.
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