Software · Manufacturing Execution System

DCWI Shop Execution System

Built and operated in-house for our own aerospace manufacturing operation

The MES running a certified welding shop's production floor — work-order routing, operator kiosks, certification-locked weld and QA operations, and live big-screen shop displays. In production today.

Request a demoTry it yourself, 2 min →

20 minutes, on sandbox data. No contract talk.

Week one to week four, in the system's own numbers

First-pass yield94.7%100%Held at 100% for three straight weeks. 615 consecutive pieces without a first-pass reject.
Technician productive time63%90%Share of the welding technicians’ available hours spent on direct production work.
Welder overtime17.8 h0 hWeek-one overtime bought no throughput on an empty weld queue. Week four cleared the biggest output week on straight time.
On-time delivery80%100%721 parts across 26 orders shipped in month one, every shipment on time for four straight weeks, every exception documented and coded.

Computed by the system's own reporting engine, the same functions that run the Monday production meeting at DCWI, a five-technician aerospace weld shop. One month in: 26 orders shipped, 279 operations signed off, 696 direct labor hours captured. Before go-live, none of these numbers existed anywhere.

DCWI Shop Execution System

How it runs the floor

One thread from work order to ship.

The routing engine walks each order through the shop step by step. Certified operations are gated, and everything the floor does feeds the kiosks, the displays and the audit trail in real time.

Work orderRouting engineFit-upWeldVisual inspectionFinal QAShipstamp-certified operators onlyOperator kiosksLive shop displaysAppend-only audit trailevery clock-in, hold and completion is visible live and recorded forever

What we changed

The same floor, before and after.

Both flows below are real: the first is how orders moved through the shop on paper, the second is how the system runs them today. Every gray box was a place where status lived in someone's head or on a sheet.

Before · the paper floor

RFQ quotedby handMaterial in,clipboard inspectionPaper travelerwritten outProduction picksthe paperWeld, thensign the sheetQC walk-over,NCR forms3rd-partyround tripsChase theinvoicerework found late, back it goeswait, re-inspect, repeatstatus lives on the paper: seeing the floor means walking it
Thirty days of go-live later

Now · the digital thread

RFQ approvedin the systemIntake inspected,NCR-gatedTraveler + WOborn digitalBlueprints in,picklist assignedWorked at kiosks,stamp-lockedQuality gated:NCR to CAPAKPIs monitoredliveInvoice releasesitselfcorrective actions verified, fed to the KPIsall information captured in the system, live: the floor and the office read the same screen

How we operate

The playbook behind the change.

01

Walk the floor

02

Map the real flow

03

Tailor the system to it

04

Gate every certified step

05

Measure everything live

No off-the-shelf template survives contact with a real shop. We start from your flow, not ours, and the system earns its place one operation at a time.

What ships with it

Controls a certified shop can live on.

Routing engine

Every work order carries its own routing. Operations open in sequence and nothing moves forward out of order.

Certification locks

Weld and inspection steps hard-lock at clock-in to operators holding the required stamp. The wrong badge simply cannot start the job.

Operator kiosks

Technicians clock in and out of operations at shop-floor kiosks. No paperwork, no back-office lag.

Live shop displays

Big-screen displays show live order status across the floor, so the whole team sees the same truth.

Append-only audit trail

Every event lands in audit records that cannot be edited or deleted. What happened is what is on record.

Time and payroll

Clock data rolls into timesheets and approval flows, closing the loop between the floor and the front office.

The COO lens

Where DCWI started, and where it runs now.

Most shops do not lose money in big dramatic ways. They lose it in small invisible ones: an estimate that drifted from reality, a bottleneck found two weeks late, a certification lapse an auditor catches before the system does. This is what changed on one real floor when the system took over.

Order statusWhiteboards, walk-arounds and phone callsLive status on every work order, on every screen
QuotingGut-feel estimates that drift from realityRe-quotes built from actual clocked hours, by process and by technician
CertificationsTrust, memory and a binder in the officeWeld and inspection steps that refuse uncertified operators at clock-in
TimesheetsAn end-of-week paper chaseClock data rolling into approvals the same day
AuditsDays of prep before every reviewAppend-only records ready the moment an auditor asks

What the operating review reads

Four numbers drive DCWI's weekly production meeting today. All four come straight out of the system, not out of anyone's memory.

  • Utilization by process and by technician
  • Bottleneck terminal callouts
  • Quoted vs actual hours variance
  • QA step compliance on every order

The point of an MES is not software. It is that the floor and the front office finally read the same numbers, live. In the guided demo we drive the system itself and show how every figure above is built.

Livein daily production at a Nadcap approved welding shop
Browser-basedmanager console, floor kiosks and big-screen displays
Audit-readyappend-only records built for quality reviews

See it running.

Ask for a guided demo. We will drive the system with you on sandbox data, phantom work orders and all, and map it to your own floor. Tailored to your operation and live in weeks, not the years and six figures of a traditional enterprise rollout.

Request a demo