What is EZIIL and what kind of fabricators is it built for?

EZIIL is a modular, cloud-based production management system built specifically for project-based steel and metal fabricators. It carries a project end-to-end — from BOM creation, operations planning and procurement, through shop-floor reporting, packing, subcontracting and dispatch — in a single system. It is designed for fabrication shops with roughly 15 to 150 employees that have outgrown Excel and paper but find traditional ERPs too heavy for project-based custom production.

Can EZIIL replace Excel-based production tracking?

Yes. BW Metall ran 10–15 concurrent projects on a stack of one-Excel-per-project files plus separate packing and dispatch sheets before switching to EZIIL. After roughly six years on the system, production runs end-to-end on EZIIL alone, with no parallel Excel backup. The recommended migration approach is to run EZIIL alongside Excel for the first three projects to build trust before retiring the spreadsheets — that is exactly how BW Metall earned the confidence to drop the backup.

How long does it take to implement EZIIL in an existing fabrication shop?

Initial production use can begin within weeks, but full shop-floor adoption is a step-by-step process. BW Metall started with a single monitor at one machine, picked the worker most likely to take to the system, and expanded outward from there. Universal adoption across all age groups was achieved over time and supported by a daily morning huddle where the office reviews EZIIL reporting completeness. EZIIL's customer success team supports this rollout pattern as the recommended template.

Does EZIIL support EN 1090 compliance, traceability and audit readiness?

Yes. EZIIL captures reported operations at the part level, so every detail can be traced back to the operator, machine and date it was produced. BW Metall — an EN 1090-2 EXC3, ISO 3834-2, ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 certified shop — was able to stop archiving physical drawings entirely as of 2026, because their digital record in EZIIL is now accurate enough to satisfy reclamation and traceability needs without folder-based archives.

How did BW Metall cut their packing-slip and dispatch paperwork time by 93%?

Before EZIIL, BW Metall's team spent roughly five hours per project manually composing packing slips and dispatch documents from blanket templates and printing them. With EZIIL's packing module, the team selects the desired parts, moves them into a pack, and prints the label. The same paperwork now takes roughly 20 minutes per project. The improvement is specific to packing-label and dispatch-document generation, not the physical act of packing.

Can EZIIL handle multiple concurrent projects without spreadsheet sprawl?

Yes, that is one of EZIIL's core strengths for project-based fabricators. BW Metall runs 10–15 concurrent projects through EZIIL at any given time. The packing and operations views show all active projects in a single left-pane list that planners can filter and sort by weight, length or project. There is no need to open multiple files or switch between spreadsheets to see across projects.

Will my shop-floor workers actually use EZIIL?

EZIIL's browser-based, mobile-style reporting interface is designed for shop-floor use across stations. Welders enter the part code, start the operation and see the live drawing version on screen. Saw, drilling and stamping operators report on profile-driven workflows. At BW Metall, every production worker — across all age groups — now reports through EZIIL, with a daily morning huddle reinforcing the habit. The pattern of starting with one monitor at one machine and expanding outward is the most successful adoption template.

Does EZIIL integrate with shop-floor machines like drilling lines?

Yes. EZIIL supports machine integrations for automatic reporting. At BW Metall, an integrated drilling line reports completed parts into EZIIL automatically, removing manual entry. Forklift commands are generated from the BOM and pushed digitally over the network rather than handed over on paper. Welders pull up parts and live drawings on screen at the welding station rather than working from printed copies.

How does EZIIL handle subcontracting like galvanizing and painting?

EZIIL has a built-in subcontracting flow. Dispatches to galvanizers and painters run through the system, and the yard inventory of items waiting for treatment or shipment is visible in EZIIL with full sort and filter by weight, length and project. This gives planners a real-time picture of what is in the yard, what is at the subcontractor and what is ready to ship to the end customer.

What modules does EZIIL include for project-based steel fabrication?

EZIIL is modular. The core modules used by BW Metall include BOM and BOM-detail overview, operations planning, browser-based shop-floor reporting (with a legacy filter-rich reporting view available in parallel), the packing module, procurement, subcontracting and dispatch. Additional capabilities include machine integrations, traceability lookup (find who made a specific part in seconds), and digital forklift commands generated directly from the BOM.

Is EZIIL flexible enough to fit our specific fabrication workflow?

Flexibility is the differentiator BW Metall named when they chose EZIIL. Most ERPs require fabricators to configure their workflow to fit the system. EZIIL's approach is to meet shops where they already are — building the features they actually need, the way they need them. For project-based fabricators with specific BOM, subcontracting or compliance workflows, that posture matters more than any individual feature checklist.

What is the difference between EZIIL and a traditional manufacturing ERP?

Traditional ERPs are typically built for series production and require fabricators to bend their workflow around the system. EZIIL is purpose-built for project-based custom steel and metal fabrication, where every job is unique and complexity scales with concurrent project count. EZIIL covers the fabrication-specific workflows — BOM-anchored procurement, multi-project packing, subcontracting flows, EN 1090 traceability, shop-floor reporting at every machine — without the heavy implementation footprint of a generalist ERP.

B&W Metall went from Excel and paper to a fully digital steel fabrication with EZIIL

B&W Metall fabricates 100 tons of steel a week. See how they replaced 10 parallel Excels and lost paper work orders with EZIIL: cutting packing-slip and dispatch paperwork from 5 hours to 20 minutes and retiring 1,000-drawing archives along the way.

B&W Metall is a structural steel fabricator headquartered in Estonia, building steel constructions for industrial and commercial projects around the world. Since 2007, the team has grown to 76+ employees turning out roughly 100 tons of steel per week, with 10-15 active orders running in parallel at any given moment.

Their work is project-based, every job is its own unique build, even when the part types repeat. The scope runs the full process: cutting, drilling, welding, hot-dip galvanizing or painting, dispatch. Their steel ends up in factories and distribution centres operated by some of the world’s most demanding industrial buyers, from automotive and e-commerce to pharma. EN 1090-2, ISO 3834-2, ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 are the compliance backbone behind every shipment, with CE marking on every load.

In this case study, we’re looking at how B&W Metall replaced Excel (and all the paper that came with it) with EZIIL, what their day looks like today, and what it took to get there.

EZIIL steel fabrication management software download

B&W Metall at a glance:

Industry: Custom structural steel fabrication
Location: Estonia
Company size: 80 employees
Active projects: 10-15 concurrent orders at any given time
Output: 100 tons per week
Average project duration: 2 weeks for smaller orders; up to 3 months for large structural projects
Certifications: up to EXC3, ISO 3834-2, ISO 9001, ISO 14001, CE marking on every shipment
Before EZIIL: Separate Excel files per project and spreadsheets for packing, dispatch sheets, printed paper work orders, printed drawings, paper forklift commands
Using EZIIL since: 2021

Before EZIIL: paper work chaos and tens of parallel Excels

Before EZIIL, B&W Metall ran their entire production on a hybrid of Excel and printed paper. Every project (ten or more in flight) got its own Excel file, with extra spreadsheets layered on top for packing and dispatch. Tracking what was produced, what was in progress, what had been packed, all happened in those spreadsheets. Layered on top: separate packing Excels, dispatch sheets, and a constant flow of printed work orders, drawings and forklift commands moving across the shop floor.

“Everything happened in Excel. The only thing I could monitor from my desk was finished, packed parts, those were ticked off in Excel. If I wanted anything more, the only way was to walk into production and either look at the physical work order or ask the operators.” – Elari, project manager and planner at B&W Metall

From a planner’s desk, the only visibility was binary: packed, or not packed. Anything in flight, being cut, being welded, queued for galvanizing, was effectively invisible. The only way to know was to walk the shop floor and ask the operator. Urgent reprioritisation was verbal: a planner walked over to the right machine and said it out loud, often without knowing how much work was actually left to push aside.

The problem was not only slow admin. It was uncertainty. When status is spread across paper, memory and separate spreadsheets, the planner carries more of the system in their own head.

“A large project could be a thousand drawings. We’d archive them in folders for years. If we needed any information afterwards, we’d open the archive, find the project’s folders and start flipping page by page to find the one detail we needed.” – Elari, project manager and planner at B&W Metall

That kind of process can function at lower volumes but as B&W’s project volume increased, the administrative load and the room for confusion grew with it.

Why BW Metall chose EZIIL

As order volume kept growing, the cracks in the Excel-and-paper stack stopped being an annoyance and started being a ceiling. The packing-slip paperwork process (copy-pasting from a blanket template into every label) alone was eating five hours of work per project and documentation was getting harder to find. The team needed a comprehensive steel fabrication management software that could carry a project end-to-end: BOM, planning, reporting, packing, dispatch, traceability. They evaluated several ERPs.

The deciding factor wasn’t a feature checklist alone. It was the flexibility. EZIIL was willing to come along and tweak the system to what B&W Metall actually needed, the way they needed it. For a fabricator with very specific workflows around BOMs, subcontracted galvanizing, traceability and a real shop floor, that flexibility made all the difference.

“The main thing was being able to run a project from start to finish through one program. EZIIL gave us the confidence we could do that.” – Elari, project manager and planner at B&W Metall

The other thing that mattered most to B&W Metall was knowing that they could keep producing. EZIIL gave them confidence the system would carry an end-to-end project. For the first three projects, the team ran EZIIL alongside Excel in parallel. After three clean closes, they trusted it enough to drop the backup.

How B&W Metall manages metal fabrication today: one system, fifteen active projects, no paper

Today, every project, from intake to dispatch, lives in EZIIL. The shop floor reports through it and the office plans through it.

“EZIIL simplifies the whole process. It gives you the overview. It pulls everything into one place, projects, profiles, everything. Once the order volume grows, I can’t see how you’d manage without it.” – Elari, project manager and planner at B&W Metall

Here’s what B&W Metall’s workflow looks like with EZIIL, across the office and the shop floor:

Project intake and BOM creation.
- The team receives the project and builds the BOM directly in EZIIL. The planners review every BOM before it goes into production.
Digital instructions instead of paper handoffs.
- Generated from the BOM (XLS export) and pushed digitally to forklift operators over the network. No paper commands.
Operations planning.
- Each operation is time-blocked per machine in EZIIL’s planning module.
Preparation and machining with live reporting.
- Material moves through preparation and machining and the drilling line auto-reports completed parts into EZIIL.
Screen-based welding workflow.
- Welders pull up the part on screen at their station, enter the part code, start the operation, and see the live drawing version. No printed drawings on the welding bench.
Shop floor management and self-reporting at every station.

Workers report completion through the EZIIL browser/mobile app.

“Instead of walking the floor to ask if something’s done, I open the machine view and I can already estimate whether a rush is actually a rush.” – Elari, project manager and planner at B&W Metall

Packing across all live projects in one place.
- Packing is handled in EZIIL, with filters across all active projects, so staff can sort what they need without searching for the right Excel file.
Dispatch and yard visibility.

Goods moving to coating, subcontracting and final dispatch remain visible in EZIIL, sortable by weight, length and project.

“I have less to worry about now. I can sit at my desk and judge the situation. That’s a big deal.” – Elari, project manager and planner at BW Metall

Traceability when it matters.

Historical lookups, including who made a specific part, can now be pulled from reported operations rather than paper archives.

“All projects are right there in the system. I can quickly filter and sort to find what I need. I’m not hunting for some Excel file anywhere.” – Elari, project manager and planner at B&W Metall

Steel production lead time reduction techniques with EZIIL software

B&W’s results with EZIIL: Five hours of packing-slip paperwork in twenty minutes, and paper-based systems eliminated

The biggest wins for B&W Metall is speed and clarity. But the broader result is control. Paper work orders are gone from the shop floor, forklift commands are digital, physical drawing archives are no longer needed for large projects, and production reporting has become a daily habit across the team.

Instead of chasing updates across separate files and paper folders, B&W Metall now works from a shared operating flow that makes progress easier to see and easier to trust. Here are the results:

1. Packing-slip and dispatch paperwork time cut by 90%

Generating packing slips and dispatch documentation used to be a five-hour job per project, is now done in roughly twenty minutes. In EZIIL, the team simply moves the selected parts into a pack and prints the label.

“Packing used to be a five-hour job. Today I can probably get the same five hours of work done in twenty minutes.” – Elari, project manager and planner at B&W Metall

2. Thousands of paper work orders and archives eliminated

B&W Metall has largely eliminated paper-based systems. Work orders, forklift commands, prep drawings are all digital today. This means no more lost work orders, no compliance gaps, and more accurate and consistent traceability.

“Today our reporting is accurate enough that we don’t need physical archives. If we ever need to look back and see who made a part, we see it in the reported operations. There are thousands and thousands of papers that today are unprinted.” – Elari, project manager and planner at B&W Metall

3. Traceability in seconds

Instead of digging through physical archives and flipping through hundreds of pages, all project information is now available in EZIIL in a few clicks.

“If we want to look back and see who made a part, we see it in the reported operations. We don’t have to dig through a stack of a thousand drawings.” – Elari, project manager and planner at BW Metall

4. 100% shop-floor adoption

Although universal adoption of EZIIL was the hardest milestone for B&W Metall, the team got there with a step-by-step rollout: first one monitor at one machine and then expanding. Today, every worker reports in EZIIL, regardless of age or role.

5. Cross-project visibility for packing and dispatch

Building packing lists across 10-15 active projects used to mean digging for the right Excel file. Today, the entire active project list sits in EZIIL, sortable and filterable by weight, length, or project. Dispatch coordination with the galvanizer and painter runs out of the same view.

6. Forklift commands now digital and network-distributed

Forklift commands used to be paper, hand-delivered. Today they’re generated from the BOM and pushed over the network to the operator. Less paper, fewer mistakes, faster handoffs.

7. Reduced cognitive load for the planning team

All of the remembering, organising and surfacing that previously lived across paper and personal follow-up, is now done by EZIIL. Removing the mental load of having to remember where every project is.

“I have less to worry about now. The kind of constant low-level worry about whether things are getting done is reduced.” – Elari, project manager and planner at B&W Metall