Glass Processors

Glass Office was originally designed with processors in mind and we have concentrated on building the most user friendly user interface on the market today.

Everyone in business needs orders. A Glass Office order can start life in several ways, it can by typed in, it can have been a previously entered quote, it may be copied from another job, or it can be imported electronically from another system – removing the need for re-typing. The customer may also send in CAD DXF files of shaped and processed glass.

For many glass processors, most jobs will start life as a quote, This can be presented to the customer in several ways, it can be on headed stationery as a un-itemised single price, or invoice style paper with itemised line items. The quote can be generated on the basis of a tariff of prices for each customer, or on the basis of the sales person experience. The job price can be overridden, based on the quantity of items, for example. In this way Glass Office is working with you, not against you, so you don’t have to lose your expertise to quote jobs in Glass Office.

Glass being processed on a CNC machine

When the customer confirms his order, the quote can be copied automatically to an order, then there will inevitably be amendments to the order, (so the quantities of items may change, the sizes may change, there may be additions and deletions of various lines of the order). Next, an order acknowledgement can be sent to the customer for his signature and approval. If there are accompanying drawings (DXF CAD images) these can sent to the customer. Naturally, all of this above can be done by email.

When the signed order acknowledgement is received back from the customer, the job can be scheduled for production, and purchase orders for bought in items can be made. Some processors will chose to buy in large and/or complex process work, but cut their own single glass, and may have a straight line edger, but not a polisher. So at this stage, they can issue purchase orders to a variety of suppliers, from the one sales order. All of these purchase orders (eg. 1 order for complex water jet cut-outs, 1 order for a bevelled mirror, 1 order for a large piece of toughened for a balustrade), are ‘tied’ to the sales order, so you can see what has been received against the order so far.

Works instructions can be generated for the shop-floor for either all items, or just the few products that will be manufactured, rather than bought in. If you make a variety of products, (eg. 4mm single and 10mm toughened), then they can be split into different works instructions for different areas of the factory, they can start production at different times, and have different routes through the factory (eg. some may be polished, some may need holes and some may need both).

Some processed pieces of glass with notches cut in them

Using the Glass Office projects option, a processor may choose to add extra information to the Glass Office database, for example, if you are in the commercial field, you could keep a record of the architect involved, the main contractors details, and the contract start and end dates.

Although, not always a requirement for processors, labels can be printed for some (or all) of the items to be delivered, and delivery notes for signing off on site.

All of the paperwork generated above can be scanned back into Glass Office, so that you have a permanent record of what was done and you won’t, therefore, need to keep masses of paper records, which are difficult to search through.

Processed glass being toughened in a tempering furnace

Glass Office has the ability with it’s filter to search, so you can find any piece of glass with minimal information, for example, find any 10mm Toughened glass with holes in we supplied during the last 6 months that are 1500 x 700 +/- 50mm. This, combined with scanning of documents, will make it easy to find old orders, and will reduce the amount of time and space needed to keep old printed records.