About two years ago a student, who was majoring in education and working on her senior project, came to Misericordia University Print and Mail Services looking for help. Her assignment was to write a children's book. She had completed the writing and wanted to get it printed. I told her we could provide the layout, and she asked me if I could supply illustrations. It was at this point that our communication broke down.
Jim Sabulski
"WE DON'T tell upper management everything that the machine can do. If they knew, well… (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) then there would be more work for us."
I WAS amazed to learn that only 42 percent of in-plants have shop management software. I then got down from my high horse and remembered the not-so-distant past when the shop that I manage was part of that statistic. Like many small in-plants we had a homegrown system that relied upon Microsoft Excel, carbonless forms, chalkboards and the memory of our employees. While it sufficed for years, the two-day drudgery of generating the end-of-the-month chargeback reports for our controller’s office was reason alone for me to begin investigating management information systems (MIS), knowing in the back of my mind that we couldn’t afford
