Find where your shop is quietly losing time.

What type of business is this?

This adjusts the ranking because different businesses usually leak time in different places. For example, CNC shops often feel tooling and job-status pain first.

CNC / machine shop Tool and die / mold shop Fabrication or welding shop Mechanical contractor Industrial maintenance company Automation / integration company

How many people touch the workflow?

Count anyone who creates, updates, waits for, or asks about this work: owners, managers, programmers, operators, inspectors, admin, and technicians.

This is used to estimate communication overhead. More people usually means more status questions, handoffs, and duplicated updates.

Estimated loaded hourly cost

Use a rough blended hourly cost for the people involved. Include wages, overhead, management time, and opportunity cost if you know it.

It does not need to be perfect. The goal is to show whether manual tracking is a small annoyance or a real monthly cost.

Quote / RFQ follow-up leaks

Move this up if quote requests arrive by email, files are hard to find, follow-ups are missed, or nobody knows which quotes are waiting.

Example: A 4 or 5 means quote status lives in inboxes, memory, or spreadsheets, and customer follow-up depends on someone remembering.

Job status visibility leaks

Move this up if people often ask, "Where is this job?", "What is next?", "Who has it?", or "Is it late?"

Example: A 4 or 5 means production status is spread across whiteboards, Excel, conversations, and individual memory.

Tooling / inventory leaks

Move this up if tool lists, setup sheets, replacements, tool life, or machine assignments are hard to trust.

Example: A 4 or 5 means people lose time searching for tools, recreating lists, replacing tools late, or guessing what belongs to which job.

Inspection / quality documentation leaks

Move this up if inspection results, photos, pass/fail notes, or customer reports take too long to create or find later.

Example: A 4 or 5 means quality records are being rebuilt manually, reports are delayed, or evidence is scattered across folders and phones.

Scheduling / maintenance leaks

Move this up if preventive maintenance, job scheduling, technician notes, work orders, or equipment history are not easy to see.

Example: A 4 or 5 means reminders are manual, work history is incomplete, and problems are usually handled only after someone notices.

Customer / internal update leaks

Move this up if customers, managers, or team members repeatedly ask for updates that should already be visible.

Example: A 4 or 5 means people spend time writing the same status messages, checking delivery readiness, or relaying handoff notes.