CW Products runs its whole shop floor on one connected system.
CubeYogi rebuilt how CW Products quotes, designs, builds, and delivers — replacing paper job tickets and a cash box with an interactive ReactJS & Python pallet design application and six connected Zoho Creator apps built for a Spokane crating and pallet plant.
A crating shop that already ran lean.
CW Products has spent decades as one of Spokane's go-to shops for custom wooden crates, heat-treated and standard pallets, dunnage, and foam packaging — the kind of business manufacturers call when a shipment has to be built to spec and out the door on time. Today the company operates as CW Crates & Pallets, still on Sharp Avenue, still running six days a week.
By 2020 the plant had outgrown the systems around it. Dozens of jobs moved through the shop at once, hundreds of clients carried their own pricing and tax rules, and a walk-up counter sold scrap mill ends out of a cash box. CubeYogi's brief was practical: keep the shop running the way the crew already knew how to run it, and give every step — quote, custom pallet design, cut list, build, load, delivery, and counter sale — a system that could hold it.
The engagement started with two weeks on the floor before a single screen was designed. CubeYogi's team shadowed sales reps writing quotes, timed builders through a full pallet run, rode along on delivery routes, and watched a Saturday morning at the mill-ends counter. That groundwork is why the final system maps so closely to how the shop already worked — nothing here asked the crew to think differently, only to write it down in a place that could talk to everything else.
A dedicated team, on-site and on the floor.
Six connected apps don't get built from a brief alone. CubeYogi put a full delivery team on this engagement — developers who spent time walking the plant, watching quotes get written, and timing builds at the saw, alongside the CW Products lead who signed off on every workflow before it shipped.
That closeness shows up in the details: goal times pulled from real stopwatch sessions on the floor, an interactive app to visually design pallets and compute cut lists, a mill-ends waiver worded the way the counter staff actually explain it, and a delivery app built around how drivers already load a truck — not how a generic logistics template assumes they should.
The shop floor had outrun the paperwork.
Every busy season was good news for a crating shop. It also meant another quote priced by hand, another job ticket tracked on paper, and another mill-ends buyer waiting at the counter with cash. Three parts of the operation felt it most.
Quotes & Pallet Design
- No shared price book — every quote priced from memory or a spreadsheet
- Manual layout drafting with no automated way to generate pallet designs
- Nothing tied a confirmed quote to the bill of materials actually cut
- Setup, cleanup, and per-unit timing tracked by habit, not a shared benchmark
- 707 client accounts, each with its own tax and pricing rules, kept by hand
- New products meant re-explaining the spec verbally to whoever was cutting that day
The floor & the truck
- Job tickets moved on paper, with no timing data on any build stage
- Delivery, will-call, and third-party freight competed for drivers, no dedicated flow
- A stalled job had no way to surface itself until someone walked the floor
- Load-out and finished-product photos lived on personal phones, not the job record
- Dispatch had no visibility into which trucks were loaded and ready to roll
Counter & pipeline
- Mill-ends buyers loaded their own scrap wood, no signed waiver, just a cash box
- Outbound prospecting ran off a personal contact list, no way to target by industry
- Hundreds of leads sat unsorted, no view of which sectors were covered
- Nothing connected a lead to the client record once they placed a first order
- End-of-day mill-ends cash reconciliation was manual and easy to get wrong
Not a new platform to learn. A record for work already happening.
CubeYogi designed every system to sit inside the crew's existing habits — one login, one platform, and a record for each step that was already happening on the floor. Six choices carried the entire build.
One platform, six apps
Quoting, production, delivery, and the mill-ends counter share one integrated login instead of five habits — one password, one place to look for any job.
Pallet Design App
A dedicated tool built with Python and ReactJS allows team members to quickly design custom pallets and auto-calculate specs.
A Bill of Materials on every product
Board type, grade, dimension, and quantity lock to the product before a saw ever runs, so what's quoted is exactly what gets cut.
Goal time on every activity
Setup, cleanup, and per-unit stages each carry a target in minutes, benchmarked from real stopwatch sessions on the floor, not a guess.
The workflow in the driver's pocket
A mobile app lets drivers swipe to complete loading and swipe to complete delivery, with the stop list already sorted by route.
Counter sales sign before they load
Mill-ends customers read the terms and sign on-screen, paired with cash, PayPal, or card, and the sale posts straight to the day's ledger.
A phased build, so the shop never stopped.
CW Products couldn't afford downtime during a rollout. CubeYogi shipped department by department, running the new system alongside the old one until each team was ready to fully switch over.
Discovery
Two weeks on the floor, timing builds and shadowing quotes before any screen was designed.
Pallet Design & Inventory
The Python/ReactJS Pallet Design app, product catalog, Price Book, and Bill of Materials went live first — the foundation everything else reads from.
Order Manager
Quoting and sales orders moved off spreadsheets, with 707 client accounts migrated and verified.
Jobs & Delivery
The shop floor and the driver-facing mobile app rolled out together, so a job never lost its thread.
Mill-Ends & Leads
The counter app and the SIC-coded lead database launched last, closing the loop from prospect to client.
Six systems, three flagship flows.
CubeYogi shipped the rebuild as six connected apps. Three flows carry the bulk of the daily work — quote to delivery, the shop-floor job, and the mill-ends counter — all reading from the same client and product records, so nothing is ever entered twice.
Order to Delivery
This is the backbone of the business — from the moment a client calls in a spec to the moment a driver swipes a delivery complete. Six steps, connected apps, one continuous record that sales, the shop floor, and dispatch can all see at the same time.
Pallet design & Quote goes in
Sales designs the custom pallet in the application, generating the specs, and pulls pricing straight from the Price Book — no calling around for a number.
Bill of Materials locks
Board type, grade, dimension, and quantity attach to the product before the quote confirms, so pricing and the cut list always agree.
Job hits the floor
The confirmed order pushes into Jobs Manager with a due date and quantity — builders see it the moment it's approved.
Delivery is scheduled
The job is tagged Delivery, Will Call, or Third Party, with address and window, so dispatch can plan the route in advance.
Driver swipes it done
The Delivery App confirms loading and delivery from a phone — no radio call back to the yard to check status.
Every job reports back
Shop Reports rolls every order, delivered or pending, into one live view that management checks each morning.
The Shop Floor Job
Once a job is on the floor, the crew logs real time against real activity types. That data feeds straight back into the goal times every future quote is priced against, so the system gets sharper with every job that runs through it.
Job opens
A job record is created against the confirmed order, product, and due date, visible to everyone on the floor.
Activity begins
Staff log time against a defined activity type — setup, build, or cleanup — with a tap, not a paper ticket.
Goal time compares
Logged time is measured against the goal time set on the product's Bill of Materials, in real time.
Fall-offs get flagged
Any job that stalls mid-build is caught instead of going quiet until someone happens to notice.
Status stays current
Every open job's stage is visible without a walk to the floor — from the office or from a phone.
The Mill-Ends Counter
Mill-ends — the offcuts and scrap wood left over from custom builds — has always been a small, steady revenue line for the shop. It used to run entirely on trust and a cash box; now it's a self-serve flow with a signed waiver and a clean paper trail.
Client selected
A walk-in or repeat buyer is looked up, or added on the spot, right at the counter — no separate intake step.
Payment chosen
Cash, PayPal, or credit card is selected alongside the mill-ends product, so the till and the record always match.
Waiver signed
The loading-risk terms are presented in full, with a signature captured on-screen before anyone touches the pile.
Order confirms
The sale posts to Mill Ends Sales and joins the Mill-Ends Queue for pickup, timestamped automatically.
Tracked to the dollar
Payments and a live chart keep mill-ends revenue visible alongside every other line in the business.
Six systems, one shop floor.
Every app reads from the same client and product records, so a job never has to be re-entered between quoting, the floor, and the road. Here's what each one owns.
Order Manager
HubQuotes, sales orders, the product catalog, client accounts, delivery scheduling, and shop reporting — the front door for every job that enters the shop.
- Manage SO & Quotes
- Client Manager — 707 accounts
- Delivery & Shipping
- Shop Reports dashboard
Pallet Designer & Inventory
App & CatalogCustom Python & ReactJS pallet design engine paired with every product's Bill of Materials, pricing, goal time, and raw material stock in one place.
- Custom Pallet Design App
- Pallet Designs & Price Book
- Bill of Materials per product
- Manage Material & Stocks
- Goal Times Manager
Jobs Manager
FloorLive tracking for every job in production — activity time, goal comparisons, fall-off alerts — so nothing on the floor goes quiet unnoticed.
- Job Activity Time Log
- Fall-Off Tracker
- Job Status Tracker
Delivery App
MobileA driver-facing mobile app for confirming loading and delivery sessions in the field, replacing radio check-ins with a swipe.
- Swipe-to-complete loading
- Delivery vs. Will Call vs. 3rd Party
- Session handler report
Mill-Ends App
CounterSelf-serve counter sales for scrap wood, with signed waivers and payment capture built in, closing out the cash-box era for good.
- E-signature liability waiver
- Cash, PayPal & card payment
- Mill-Ends Queue & live chart
Client/Lead Database
PipelineA prospecting base of 728 companies, SIC-coded so outbound sales can target by industry instead of working a cold list at random.
- 908 SIC codes on file
- Dispersion of leads reports
- Lead-to-client conversion
A closer look at the screens the crew uses every day.
From the custom pallet design tool and product catalog behind every quote to the SIC-coded list that drives outbound sales — the screens below run in production at CW Products right now.
What the crew says about working in the new system.
We used to lose half a day chasing down where a job was. Now I open one screen and I can see every order, who's building it, and whether it's on schedule — before I've even had coffee.
What changed, in practice.
The rebuild didn't ask the crew to work differently — it gave the way they already worked a record that holds up, end to end, from the first quote to the last swipe on a delivery.
One login
Quoting, pallet design, production, and delivery run on one connected ecosystem.
Accounts on file
Every client's pricing and tax rules travel with the record automatically.
Locked cut lists
What's designed and quoted is what gets cut — attached before the saw runs.
Real benchmarks
Setup, cleanup, and per-unit stages get a target instead of a guess.
Not a radio call
Drivers confirm loading and delivery from a phone in the cab.
Not cash-only
Mill-ends waivers are read and signed on-screen, payment tracked.
Leads worth targeting
SIC-coded prospects give outbound sales a map instead of a guess.
Status at a glance
Every order's state is visible without a walk to the floor.
