Digitalization Roadmap — Ridgeline Millworks
Custom architectural millwork manufacturer · two sites · 63 employees · the delivered report, in full, for a company that does not exist.
This page is the deliverable. The demo is the product. What follows is the report as a client receives it — baseline, ranked levers, costs, payback, phased plan, and the assumptions behind all of it. What it cannot show is the part you use every week: the timeline you drag, the maps you edit, the spend and savings you record as they happen. Open the live demo to click through this same roadmap in the real workspace, or read on.
Baseline assessment
Scheduling runs on a shop-floor whiteboard and paper job travelers; inventory is tracked manually; order intake is by phone and email. No ERP or MES system currently in place.
Prioritized digitalization levers
Every candidate ranked by impact, effort and payback — including the ones we advise against, with the reason. This table is the heart of the report, and it is the Levers tab of the workspace with the same numbers in it.
| Lever | Type | Impact | Effort | Est. cost | Est. payback |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Standardize work instructions & visual management (5S) | Process | High | Low | $500–$1,500 | <2 months |
| Barcode-based inventory tracking | Technology | High | Medium | $8,000–$12,000 | ~9 months |
| Digital shop-floor job travelers | Technology | High | Medium | $15,000–$25,000 | ~7 months |
| Customer self-service order portal | Technology | Medium | Low | $5,000–$8,000 | ~5 months |
| Quality / rework tracking dashboard | Software + Process | Medium | Medium | $6,000–$10,000 | ~8 months |
| Preventive-maintenance tracking app | Technology | Low | Low | $2,000–$4,000 | ~4 months |
| Scheduling / ERP-lite integration | Technology | Medium | High | $30,000–$50,000 | ~14 months |
ROI summary (illustrative)
Recommended solutions & providers
| Lever | Category | Example solutions / providers |
|---|---|---|
| 5S / visual management | Process | In-house (free templates) or a 1–2 day outside facilitator |
| Barcode inventory tracking | Software + Hardware | Wasp Barcode, Fishbowl Inventory, Zebra Technologies |
| Digital job travelers | Software | Prodsmart, Fulcrum, MachineMetrics |
| Customer order portal | Software | Lightweight form + CRM, or a custom portal |
| Quality / rework dashboard | Software + Process | Digital checksheet tool + defined defect categories |
| Preventive-maintenance app | Software | UpKeep, Fiix, MaintainX |
| Scheduling / ERP-lite | Software | Katana MRP, JobBOSS², Fishbowl Manufacturing |
Named vendors are illustrative categories to guide evaluation, not endorsements — always run a short bake-off before purchasing.
Proposed architecture
Inventory, job travelers, and scheduling will eventually share data even though they're being adopted as separate point solutions — worth planning the connection points now.
Phase 1 (0–90 days)
5S, barcode inventory, and the order portal stood up independently — minimal integration yet.
Phase 2 (90–180 days)
Job travelers begin pulling material data from inventory; defects tagged to job IDs.
Phase 3 (180+ days)
Scheduling/ERP-lite becomes the central system, integrating everything above.
Process flow & tools map
Current state against future state, lane by lane: which tool touches each process step today and what replaces it, with each step tied to the lever that pays for the change. In the workspace this is an editable map rather than a picture — click a step to change its tool, its owner or the lever it belongs to, and the architecture map updates with it.
Recommended phased roadmap
30 days
- 5S / visual management
- Customer self-service order portal
- Preventive-maintenance tracking app
90 days
- Barcode-based inventory tracking
- Quality / rework tracking dashboard
180 days
- Digital shop-floor job travelers
- Scheduling / ERP-lite integration
Assumptions & data gaps
- Cost ranges reflect typical implementation costs for a shop this size, not vendor quotes — confirm with 2–3 vendors before committing budget.
- Figures assume phased rollout without major production disruption.
- Assumes shop-floor Wi-Fi/network coverage is sufficient for tablet-based job travelers — to be confirmed on site.
- No existing ERP/MES assumed; if one exists, the scope of the scheduling lever would change.