How a KonstanTrack rollout actually works
Five steps, what we need from you at each one, and an honest list of the things that make panel-shop rollouts fail.
In short
Implementation runs in five steps — workflow review, system setup, data and process alignment, team training, and go-live support. It is configured around the stages you already use, and it is designed to be running in weeks rather than after a year-long enterprise rollout.
The five steps
1. Workflow review
We map how a job actually moves through your shop today — enquiry, design release, kitting, build, test, QA, dispatch — including the informal steps that only work because someone remembers them. This is the step that decides whether the rest goes well.
What we need from you: Two to three hours from whoever knows the real process.
2. System setup
KonstanTrack is configured around your stages, your roles, your approval points and the reporting you actually use. Not a template with your logo on it.
What we need from you: Decisions on stage names, who approves what, and which reports matter.
3. Data and process alignment
We review the spreadsheets, job lists and workflow rules you have now, agree what comes across, and settle the process questions the review surfaced. Some of those are decisions the shop has been avoiding — better to make them here than mid-build.
What we need from you: Access to current job data, and a decision-maker for the process questions.
4. Team training
Admins, engineers and shop-floor users are trained separately, on real jobs. A wireman needs ten minutes and a tablet; a contracts manager needs the reporting view.
What we need from you: Shop time — usually short sessions per group rather than one long one.
5. Go-live support
We run your first live jobs alongside you and refine the setup as reality bites. Things always come up in week one that no review would have found.
What we need from you: Willingness to tell us what is annoying while it is still cheap to change.
What makes rollouts fail
These are not hypothetical risks from a project-management textbook. They are the recognisable ways shop-floor software gets quietly abandoned.
- Nobody on the shop floor was involved before go-live, so the system arrives as something done to them.
- The process questions surfaced in the review get deferred, and the system inherits the ambiguity.
- It runs in parallel with the old spreadsheet indefinitely. Two sources of truth is worse than one.
- Approvals are configured to match what the process document says rather than what people actually do.
What implementation does not cover
- Configuring or migrating your ERP, MRP or accounting system.
- CAD or EPLAN work — design authoring stays where it is.
- Writing your quality procedures for you. We hold the evidence; the process is yours.
- Bespoke integration work, unless it is agreed and scoped separately.
Common questions
How long does implementation take?
The honest answer depends on how clean your current process is and how many people need training. We agree the scope during the workflow review and give you a realistic estimate then, not before it.
Do we have to change how we work?
The system is configured around the stages you already use rather than a generic template. Where it does push back, it is usually on things that are already causing problems — a stage nobody signs off, a revision nobody records.
What do you need from us?
Time from someone who genuinely knows how jobs move through the shop, a decision-maker who can settle process questions, and access to the job list and stage definitions you use today.
What happens to our existing data?
We review what exists — spreadsheets, job lists, stage definitions — and agree what is worth bringing across. Historic records are usually better archived than migrated; live jobs are the ones that matter.
Who trains the shop floor?
We do, on the real work rather than a demo dataset. Admins, engineers and shop-floor users are trained separately because they use different parts of the system.
Related
Start with the workflow review
It is the first step either way, and it tells both of us quickly whether this is a fit.
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