By Jeff Reiter, CEO RWK IT Services
If you’re running IT or operations for a manufacturing company in Chicagoland, there’s a good chance your tech stack is quietly draining cash.
Not in an obvious “big outage, big bill” kind of way.
I’m talking about the slow leaks: wasted time, duplicate tools, manual re-entry, and miscommunication that eats into margins and occasionally shuts a line down. I see it in plants from Elk Grove to Joliet every month.
One manufacturer I worked with had five different systems handling work orders, BOMs, and inventory. None integrated. Operators hunted for data instead of running machines. Leadership didn’t realize how bad it was—until a line went down and orders slipped.
After we fixed it? They were saving over $40K a year and gained about three hours per shift back on the floor.
Here are three places you’re probably bleeding cash right now—and what to do about it.
Money Leak #1: Shop Floor Communication Chaos
Estimated burn: $4,500–$6,000/month for a 10-person team
Take a look at how your people actually communicate day to day:
- Teams, Slack, and email
- Text messages between supervisors
- “Ask Jim, he knows”
- And of course, the classic: sticky notes on clipboards
Every department has their “favorite” tool. One person checks email twice a day. Another basically lives in Teams. Someone else responds only to texts. Important details get scattered across five systems and three brains.
That doesn’t just annoy people—it kills throughput.
Your team burns hours every week:
- Hunting for “the latest” version of a file
- Digging through old message threads
- Re-explaining the same instructions in three places
In a 10-person operation, that’s easily $70,000+ a year in lost productivity.
How to fix it:
- Pick one platform for internal chat (e.g., Teams) and stick to it
- Standardize where files live (e.g., SharePoint, with clear folders)
- Use a proper production/project system (JobBOSS, ProShop, Monday, etc.) for work tracking
- Make it culture: “If it’s not in the system, it doesn’t exist.”
A plastics manufacturer in Joliet did nothing fancy—just centralized communication and set expectations. They reclaimed 1,200+ hours a year without buying a single new machine.
Money Leak #2: Manual Data Entry & Tools That Don’t Talk
Estimated burn: $5,000–$20,000 per year (usually more)
If your people are typing the same order or customer information into multiple systems—ERP, MES, CRM, accounting—you’re paying skilled workers to be copy-paste machines.
A supplier in Elk Grove was entering order details into four different systems. Each order took about 15 minutes per system. At 100 new orders a month, that came out to 300+ hours a year of pure administrative drag.
That’s not “attention to detail.” That’s waste.
How to fix it:
- Integrate systems wherever possible. Even older platforms can usually connect via APIs, middleware, or custom scripts
- Automate handoffs between ERP and production scheduling so planners aren’t retyping data
- Use tools like Power Automate or Zapier to sync customer/order info across CRM, email, and finance
The rule here is simple:
Stop paying humans to do robot work.
Your people should be solving problems on the line, improving processes, and making decisions—not re-entering Part #1234 into the fourth form of the day.
Money Leak #3: Subscriptions No One Remembers Buying
Estimated burn: $6,000–$18,000 per year
Most manufacturers I talk to have at least a handful of “ghost” tools billing them every month:
- Old cloud services from a “temporary” trial
- Two or three overlapping project management tools
- CRM seats for people who left the company a year ago
- A Dropbox Business plan still running even though you moved to SharePoint
I helped an aerospace parts manufacturer in Frankfort run a quick 30-minute audit. No heavy lifting. Just a review of their recurring charges.
They uncovered over $11,000/year in stuff no one was using—or even remembered approving.
How to fix it:
- Pull the last 3 months of card and bank statements
- Highlight every recurring software or tech charge
- For each one, ask:
- Are we actively using this?
- Does it duplicate something else?
- If we didn’t already have it, would we buy it again today?
- Anything that fails that test? Cancel it.
For manufacturers running lean (which is…most of them), this is instant margin. No new hires. No new machines. Just less waste.
The Real Impact: More Than a Line Item
Let’s say you clean up just these three areas and only get average results:
- Save 2 hours/week per person on communication
→ $36,400/year
- Automate one major workflow
→ $4,000/year
- Cancel unused tools
→ $6,000/year
That’s $46,400/year in savings.
Not “soft benefits.” Not buzzwords. Real cash you can:
- Put toward that CNC or automation project you’ve been postponing
- Use to upgrade cybersecurity (yes, manufacturers are a top target)
- Keep as working capital to ride out the next supply chain or economic wobble
You don’t need a massive “digital transformation initiative” to get there. You need:
- A clear view of where your systems are slowing you down
- A practical plan to tighten things up without disrupting production
Ready to Stop Funding Tech Waste?
I see the same story over and over across Chicagoland: smart, successful manufacturers stuck with legacy tools, disconnected systems, and no time to step back and fix it.
When they finally do?
- Margins go up
- Downtime drops
- People stop drowning in busywork
If you’re sick of wondering where the money went and want to start seeing a real return on your IT spend, let’s talk.
Book a free discovery call - https://rwksolvesit.com/discoverycall/
We’ll review your tech stack, flag the quiet money leaks, and lay out a no-BS roadmap to fix them—using the tools you already have wherever possible.
In manufacturing, downtime is a four-letter word.
Let’s make sure your technology isn’t the reason you’re hearing it on the shop floor.
