Jay Stoltzfus AI Tools for Manufacturers Somebody in your shop is already using AI. Probably not you. Last month it was a quality manager who pasted a customer's print into a free chatbot to help write an inspection report. Before that, the ...
Jay Stoltzfus Employee Retention in Your Shop Starts With Better IT The notice is two sentences long and sitting on your desk when you walk in. It's from the guy who programs both of your newest machines, and he already has something lined up 20 minutes up the road. Y...
Jay Stoltzfus Antivirus vs EDR The first person to notice is almost never in the office. It's the guy at the machine, pulling up a print for the next job, getting an error instead. He tries the folder again. The file names look wro...
Jay Stoltzfus 4 Tech Myths for Manufacturers That Cost Real Money A two-page security questionnaire comes over from your biggest customer's purchasing group. Someone prints it and sets it on your desk. Multi-factor authentication on company email: yes or no. Backups...
Jay Stoltzfus How to Choose an IT Provider for Your Machine Shop It's 7:15 on a Wednesday. The file server that holds every print, every Mastercam program, and the folder your quotes come out of went unreachable sometime during second shift. You called your IT comp...
Jay Stoltzfus Cloud Solutions for Small Manufacturers It's the Monday after a Saturday storm. The power blinked twice over the weekend, and the server in the office closet is making a noise it has never made before. First shift is already clocked in. The...
Jay Stoltzfus Shop Floor Wi-Fi Dead Zones It's 9:15 on a Wednesday. Your setup guy is standing at machine four with a tablet, trying to pull the current revision of a print, and the wheel just spins. He walks twenty feet toward the office and...
Jay Stoltzfus IT Budget for Small Manufacturers The invoices arrive one at a time, so nobody notices. A software renewal in February. Two more user seats in April when you hired a second programmer. Eleven hundred dollars for the guy who drove out ...
Jay Stoltzfus Gmail Security for Manufacturers It's 7:10 on a Tuesday. Your office manager takes a call from the buyer at your biggest customer, and it isn't about the parts. He wants to know why last month's payments went to a different bank. He ...
Jay Stoltzfus Remote Work Security for Small Manufacturers It's 7:20 on a Sunday night. Your estimator is at her kitchen table finishing three quotes that have to go out first thing Monday. She's on her own laptop, the one her son uses for games, remoted into...
Jay Stoltzfus Tribal Knowledge in Manufacturing A repeat job comes back after 14 months. Same customer, same print, same 300 pieces. You quoted it off the old numbers because you know this one runs clean. Except the man who set it up the first time...
Jay Stoltzfus Data Backup for Manufacturers The compressor kicks on at 5:50 Monday morning. Coffee is going, first shift is walking in, and your lead guy opens the folder to pull the print for the job that ships Thursday. It is empty. So is the...
