A good work order management software should make managing a shop full of 3D printers, engineers, and designers seem like a cohesive operation. A great work order management solution will even help your operation save time and money. And in this New Year, make saving time and money your New Year’s resolution.

Since not all work order management systems are created equal, here are five must-have features and specs a great work order management software should have.

3D Printing Order Management

This first one should be a no brainer. The ability to cleanly organize all of your job and orders in one place is invaluable in saving time, money, and energy when managing a shop.

Click here for a peek at the features we are covering in this article.

Features like being able to sort and filter jobs by material, due date, status, and printer type to name a few can go a long way in terms of keeping a shop organized instead of having to rely on email chains and spreadsheets.

Clear Roles with Clear Lines of Communication

When you are interacting along with collaborating with multiple people on different teams, they all have different needs and requirements for a job.

Look for features like messaging, notifications, and different roles such as an operator, requester, and administrator. That way, printer and shop operators can get your part to you easily and communicate with your team within a single line of communication.

Job and Part Tracking

Keeping track of a few jobs and parts is easy when there are just a few. Managing and printing tens to maybe hundreds of requests can easily get out of hand.

A dashboard where you can keep track of where requests come from, what team or department, when they are needed, and where they are in the process of printing can allow for very detailed records to look back on and keep jobs on track.

Technology Agnostic

When you are in the additive manufacturing industry. There are many files that you might come across besides your run of the mill STL or OBJs.

Having a software that supports not just native CAD formats but also common office formats like PDFs, Excel, and Word can aid in keeping everything organized in one place rather than in many different locations.

3D Printing Cost Calculation

A cost calculator is one of the most powerful tools that a shop can have, the ability to calculate material usage, equipment runtime, and other quantifiable factors. Regardless of whether you have a titanic sized or tight budget, counting your costs is a lifesaver!

All of the features mentioned above are money, time, and energy savers that will help you keep your New Year’s resolution. They turn a shop from a disjointed and complicated mess into an intuitive easy to use system.

Many work order management software solutions might have one or a few of these features but having a software that covers all of your bases can really move your shop and by extension your company forward.

GrabCAD Shop is an example of a great 3D printing work order management solution. Our software has proven to save 15% of shop operator’s time while also improving additive workflows.

But don’t just take our word for it! Read how GrabCAD Shop helped manage the production of over 100,000 face shields during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak.

Download the case study