A department-by-department operations portal for Evans Machinery, built on your Global Shop backbone — so work flows cleanly from a sales order all the way to install, nothing gets lost in the emails and hallway conversations in between, and management can see and steer the whole thing from one screen.
I'll be straight with you: waiting too long to build your operational foundation can be catastrophic to a growing business. So I can only strongly suggest you start sooner rather than later.
It doesn't have to be with BuiltByPELT. But it does need to be with real production software — something built for your day-to-day operations. Global Shop is excellent at what it does; it just doesn't do this. I know that firsthand, because I've lived it.
That's exactly why this was so easy for me to lay out — I already know what the business needs. This proposal is what I'd build.
If you do one thing out of everything in here, do this one — and the good news is it's already built. It just needs your data from Global Shop to switch on. The online parts system is constant, recurring revenue that costs almost nothing to stand up: a small share off the back end of each sale, and very little overhead beyond carrying enough inventory to meet the demand it creates.
It keeps steady cash flowing in and out of the business at all times — money coming in the door while the bigger projects are being built and worked out. And it isn't limited to Evans equipment owners: opened up as a general parts counter, it becomes especially powerful as you take on larger ports and bulk-handling customers who order constantly.
Global Shop is great at records, accounting, and the numbers. But the day-to-day operation of the shop still runs on emails, texts, whiteboards, and hallway conversations — and that's exactly where key information gets lost. This build fills that gap: an Operations Portal tailored to every department, all connected, so a job never falls into the space between two teams again.
Global Shop holds the records, but the real coordination lives in inboxes and in people's heads. Every time work is handed from sales to engineering to the floor, detail and time leak out at the seam — and the shop pays for it in rework, delays, and parts that aren't there when they're needed.
A portal per department — Engineering, Sales, Parts, Fab, Machine, Weld, Powder Paint, Assembly, Install, and Admin — each purpose-built, all connected, all rolling up into one Management view. The hand-off carries the information with it; nothing depends on someone remembering to send an email.
Global Shop stays the system of record. BuiltByPELT builds the layer on top — the portals people actually use and the data plumbing that keeps every department in sync, so information stops dying between teams.
Every team gets a screen that fits the way they actually work — not a generic ERP form. Each one writes back to the same system, so the whole company is always looking at one truth.
Load, maintain, and coordinate every new machine — BOMs, drawings, revisions, and change orders — then release clean, buildable work packets to the floor.
Pipeline, quotes, and custom-work estimating in one place — a won order drops straight into engineering and scheduling, with no re-keying and no lost paperwork. Includes the mobile Sales App.
The parts counter, catalog, and managed-inventory / auto-restock program — plus the customer parts app that puts a salesman in every customer's pocket.
Cutting, nesting, and forming queue tied to material on hand and the jobs waiting on it — so steel moves in the right order.
Machine load, program library, and job queue, so every spindle knows what's next and nothing sits idle.
Weld queue with procedures (WPS) and welder certifications tracked against each job — quality and traceability built in.
Paint queue by color and batch, with cure and rack tracking, so the booth never becomes the bottleneck.
Kitted builds, assembly checklists, and quality sign-off before a unit ships or heads out to install.
Crew dispatch, schedules, and the field app for on-site install, PM, and service — with photos, GPS, and customer sign-off.
Payroll, HR, inventory, and shop / employee time tracking — the back office on the same system as the floor.
We can also build a smart training assistant delivered straight to employees' phones. It trains your people, keeps them current on their certifications, and rolls out every new fabrication and piece of equipment the moment it lands — so nobody's ever left working off "nobody told me that" or "I didn't know it had to be done that way" again.
Developing your people is one of the best investments you can make, and this makes it easy. Because it's built to be engaging, employees don't mind doing it — they can knock it out at home on the couch instead of on your clock. That's a real cost saver, and it builds a sharper, more capable crew in a way ordinary training never could.
The point of connecting the portals is a clean hand-off at every seam. A job enters at sales and moves through the shop without ever leaving the system — each department picks it up already knowing exactly what's needed, instead of chasing down an email or waiting on a conversation.
Key information lives in emails, texts, and hallway conversations. It gets forgotten, buried, or lost in a hand-off — and by the time anyone notices, it's rework, a missed date, or a part that isn't on the shelf. Every seam between two departments is a place for something to fall through.
When every department works in the same connected system, the hand-off carries the information with it. Nothing depends on someone remembering to send an email or catch the right person in the hall. Each team picks up the job already knowing what's needed — and management can see the whole line at once.
Nobody has to buy the whole thing at once. We build in phases — each one delivers something usable and de-risks the next. We start small, prove it fast, and grow from there.
Stand up the Management Portal and the connected data layer on top of Global Shop, so every department is finally working from one truth instead of a dozen inboxes.
Fab, Machine, Weld, Powder Paint, and Assembly portals, plus shop / employee time tracking. Real work moving through real screens, department to department.
Engineering, Sales (+ Sales App), and the Customer Portal. Order-to-floor becomes one clean flow, and the customer gets a window in.
Payroll, HR, and inventory brought onto the same system — the back office stops living in spreadsheets.
Tune, extend, and support the system as Evans grows — new equipment lines, new departments, new locations.
This isn't an outside software vendor guessing at how a shop runs. It's built by someone who's stood at the weld table, run the parts counter, and managed projects and crews for fifteen years — someone who has lived exactly the problem this solves.
We sit down and map the departments, the Global Shop data, and how work really moves today — ending in a clear, scoped plan for the smartest place to start.
We build one phase at a time. Each phase ships something your team actually uses, proves itself, and shapes the next — no big-bang risk.
Support and continuous improvement as Evans grows — new equipment lines, new departments, new locations, all on the same system.
It was never about what the AI could do for Evans. It's about what I could do for Evans with the AI I use — and the first thing I'd do is develop this entire system: one that makes everyone's job that much easier and more efficient, drives sales, and helps develop new lifetime customers.