About Grace Steel Service & Watchdog Trailers
Grace Steel Service is a long-standing steel service center with decades of experience in the metals market, committed to providing quality steel materials with honesty, integrity, and value. The company supplies hot-rolled, cold-rolled, and structural steel products for fabrication and industrial use, serving a wide range of customers with reliable steel solutions.
Grace Steel Service also operates as the fabrication hub supporting trailer manufacturing for Watchdog Trailers, a growing open-trailer manufacturer distributed throughout the United States.
From this shared facility in South Bend, IN, steel parts are cut, bent, welded, powder-coated, and assembled into finished trailer components.
As trailer demand increased, leadership recognized the need for stronger operational infrastructure to manage production complexity and support scalable growth.
The Challenge
As production volume increased at Grace Steel and Watchdog Trailers’ shared South Bend facility, the team outgrew the paper-and-spreadsheet approach that had supported earlier operations. More parts were moving through more stations each day, and coordination depended on travelers, manual handoffs, and tribal knowledge.
Company leadership needed a clearer way to track work in progress, manage machine-specific requirements, and spot delays early, before they impacted trailer assembly. That led to several operational gaps:
Paper-based production tracking:
Each part moved across stations with a printed work order (“traveler”), making real-time tracking difficult.
Limited visibility across work cells:
Leadership couldn’t easily see where parts stood, what was delayed, or what was ready for assembly.
No structured definition of part workflows:
Different parts followed different fabrication paths, but there was no centralized way to define and track required steps by part.
Machine-specific file complexity:
Different CNC machines required different file formats and setup instructions, without consistent revision control tied to the work order.
Manual order setup in spreadsheets:
Orders weren’t automatically connected to parts, steps, and workstation instructions—so setup was manual and inconsistent.
The Solution
Simpleday implemented a connected manufacturing workflow inside monday.com, supported by advanced make.com automations, to digitize and structure the entire steel fabrication process.
A Workflow That Mirrors the Factory Floor
Instead of generic status columns, the system reflects the actual shop layout.
Each fabrication station (cutting, press brake, welding, powder coating, QC, etc.) is structured as:
- Its own group
- Its own tailored views
- Its own production stage
Each department sees only what’s relevant to their station, while leadership maintains full end-to-end visibility.
Automated Order-to-Production Setup
When a new order enters the system, Make.com automations are used to:
- Associate the order with the correct parts from a centralized Parts Table
- Generate only the required fabrication steps for each part
- Populate setup instructions and relevant blueprint files
- Create workstation-specific QR codes
This eliminates manual setup and ensures every work order begins complete and accurate.
Centralized Parts Database
A dedicated Parts Table serves as the source of truth for every part.
Each record includes:
- Part number and description
- Quantity per trailer
- Blueprint attachments
- Key production data
This ensures consistency and prevents duplicated or outdated information.
Defined Work Steps Per Part
A structured Steps board defines:
- Required stations per part
- Setup instructions per machine
- Notes and specifications
Only relevant steps are generated per order, reducing clutter and confusion on the shop floor.
QR Code Access for Operators
Each workstation has a QR code allowing operators to:
- Scan and access their work queue
- View blueprints and setup instructions
- Log quantities completed
This enables shop-floor updates without requiring every operator to have a licensed monday.com account.
End-to-End Production Visibility
The main production board provides:
- All parts tied to each work order
- All required fabrication stages
- Real-time status per station
- Clear completion tracking
Each stage has its own view for focused execution, while leadership can view the entire production pipeline in one place.
The Impact: A Scalable, Paperless Factory Floor for Grace Steel
By replacing fragmented, manual processes with a centralized digital ecosystem, Grace Steel has successfully built a scalable manufacturing infrastructure that eliminates administrative bottlenecks and provides total shop-floor transparency.
Structured digital tracking system replaced paper travellers, giving every work order a clear, traceable path through production.
Incoming orders now trigger fully built production workflows automatically, eliminating manual setup and reducing errors from the start.
Leadership gains real-time visibility into bottlenecks, making it easy to spot where production slows and take action before delays escalate.
Machine instructions are standardized across workstations, with centralized setup guidance and file access ensuring consistency on the floor.
By working with Simpleday to move from paper to digital systems, Grace Steel built a manufacturing infrastructure designed to handle growing trailer demand without the errors and time drain caused by manual processes. Perhaps most importantly, Grace Steel rolled out a brand-new system that was adopted by all team-members to save time across all aspects of the company’s daily operations.
