Replaced with custom MES Kanban + free software.

Kingsland Fabrications is a steel fabrication specialist based in Warrington. Like many successful fabrication businesses, they had grown for years on reputation, repeat work, and word of mouth. When Stephen Chappell, the Managing Director, first got in touch, he was looking for one thing: their first proper website.

What started as a relatively straightforward web design enquiry turned into something much more significant — a multi-year partnership that has transformed how the entire business operates.

The real problem (it wasn’t the website)

During our first discovery call, it quickly became clear that the website was a symptom, not the root cause.

The business was still running large parts of its operation on a physical Kanban board and a collection of free or low-cost software tools that had been bolted together over time. Jobs moved through the workshop on a visual board. Status updates required someone from the office to physically walk out to the fabrication bays, ask questions, and then key the information back into spreadsheets or basic systems.

This created constant friction:

• Jobs went missing or got delayed because status wasn’t visible.
• Admin staff spent significant time chasing information instead of processing orders or supporting customers.
• As the business took on more work, the manual system became a hard limit on growth.

Stephen and the team knew they needed better systems. They just hadn’t found the right partner to build something that actually fitted how a real fabrication shop works.

Phase 1: Building the Manufacturing Execution System (MES)

We started where the pain was most acute — on the shop floor.

We built Kingsland a custom Manufacturing Execution System designed specifically around steel fabrication workflows. Key capabilities included:

• Real-time job tracking as work moved through cutting, welding, finishing, and dispatch stages.
• Digital stage transitions that replaced the physical Kanban board.
• Visibility from the office straight through to the fabrication bays (and vice versa).
• Better data capture at each stage without creating extra work for the welders and fabricators.

The impact was immediate. Admin stopped having to chase people for updates. The shop floor started reporting status themselves because the system was finally useful to them. The constant human bottleneck started to ease.

This was the foundation. Everything that came afterwards built on this system.

Phase 2: The website they originally asked for

With the back-office and shop floor systems on firmer ground, we could build a website that actually represented the quality of the business.

The new site (kingslandfabrications.co.uk) was their first proper online presence. It included professional photography taken on site, clear service pages, and proper enquiry forms. For the first time, people who had never heard of Kingsland could find them and see the standard of work they actually produced.

The site began generating organic enquiries that the business had never received before through word of mouth alone.

Phase 3 and beyond: Layering on production AI

Once the core operational system was stable, we began identifying specific manual processes that were still eating large amounts of time and introducing errors.

Paint note automation

One of the most painful daily tasks was creating paint instructions from customer drawings and cut lists. A supervisor was spending up to two hours every day reading PDFs, interpreting dimensions and material calls, and manually writing out paint notes.

We built an automated pipeline using OCR tuned for engineering drawings combined with a language model (initially Mistral) that could understand the structure of fabrication drawings. The system now reads the drawings, extracts the relevant information, and generates the paint instructions automatically.

The supervisor who used to do this work now spends that time fabricating and quality checking instead.

Invoice and purchase order matching

Another major time sink was reconciling supplier invoices against purchase orders and goods receipts. We extended the system to automatically match invoices, flag mismatches, and create clean three-way match records ready for payment.

Drawing extraction and BOM creation

We added automated extraction from engineering drawings and cut lists, turning unstructured PDFs into structured data that feeds directly into job creation and material planning.

Shop floor conversational assistant

We built a practical AI assistant that the fabrication team can use on tablets or phones in the workshop. They can ask questions in plain English about job status, drawings, stock, and procedures without having to walk back to the office or interrupt someone.

Photo-based QC inspection and workflow automation

Further layers have been added for quality control using photos, plus additional workflow automation that keeps jobs moving without constant manual intervention.

The ongoing relationship

What makes this project particularly valuable is that it didn’t stop at “go live”.

We continue to work with Kingsland on an ongoing basis. Every few months we review the operation together, identify the next piece of manual drudgery that shouldn’t exist, and build the next layer. The system keeps evolving because the business keeps growing and the team keeps finding new bottlenecks worth removing.

This is the model we believe works best for fabrication and manufacturing businesses: start with the real operational pain, build something that actually helps the people doing the work, and then keep improving it over time.

Results that matter

• The original Kanban board and fragmented free software have been replaced with a proper Manufacturing Execution System.
• A supervisor is saving up to two hours per day on paint notes alone.
• The business has its first real website and is generating enquiries it would never have received otherwise.
• Multiple AI layers are now running in production, each removing specific manual work that was previously accepted as “just how things are”.
• Stephen and the team have visibility and control over the operation that simply didn’t exist before.

More importantly, the relationship has changed. Kingsland no longer sees us as “the website people”. We are now the partner who helps them run the whole shop more effectively.

Why this approach works

Many businesses in fabrication and manufacturing get sold either:

• Generic “AI transformation” projects that never quite fit the reality of the workshop, or
• Basic websites and off-the-shelf software that don’t address the real operational constraints.

The Kingsland project succeeded because we started with the actual work — how jobs move, how information flows (or doesn’t), and what the people on the tools actually need. Every subsequent AI feature was built on that foundation.

This is the pattern we now repeat with other manufacturers and fabricators who want systems that genuinely improve how the business runs, rather than just adding another layer of software.

This case study reflects ongoing work with Kingsland Fabrications as of 2026. The system continues to grow as new bottlenecks are identified and removed.