The customer orders a stand. You build it half from the warehouse, half in the workshop.

One project. One continuous flow.

An exhibition stand comes down to walls, flooring, furniture, lighting and one large printed surface. Behind it sits a project where a lot of things have to come together at exactly the right time. And when the fair opens, it all has to be standing.

Sales, rental, production and hiring in run in Jobtura as separate job types, each with its own document chain. Only services and goods sit in the same job. They come together in the project: it gathers any number of jobs and shows them in a tree view.

Then you plan: which articles are needed, what is in your own stock, what has to be hired in or bought? Which fitters, which vehicles, when the build-up, when the get-out? If the project moves, that carries through to the jobs inside it, instead of each one being dragged along by hand.

Whether furniture, displays, trussing or lighting are already committed to another stand is shown by the bar chart across jobs and line items. Traffic lights flag a shortage as you enter it, not only when it is packed.

Standard equipment meets custom build

This is exactly where exhibition stand building differs from classic event technology. Part of the stand comes out of the warehouse again and again. Another part is made specially for this one project.

For custom walls, counters, platforms or cladding you open a production job, with its own documents from the quote through the order confirmation to the delivery note. Material used up along the way hangs on it as consumable articles.

Graphics and prints are produced at the same time. Banners, films, fabric prints and lettering belong to the project just as much as the substructure beneath them. What is built in house and what is ordered outside hang on the same project.

Papers for the stand sit on the job, not in a folder beside it. Required documents make it obvious before the next step when something is missing.

Warehouse, logistics and the question of whether it pays off

Packing lists prepare what belongs on which vehicle and to which stand. Line items are assigned to transports, transports are bundled into routes. Anything nobody has planned is listed separately, so nothing gets left behind.

After the fair the way back to the warehouse begins. Damage and late returns are recorded and can be passed on, instead of quietly getting lost. For items tracked individually it stays traceable which one was with which customer.

Fitters, joiners, project managers and drivers have to be in the right place at the right time. Qualifications, availability and approved absences feed into the staffing. For the vehicles, capacity and the licence class held on file count.

At the end, purchasing, hired-in equipment, staff and vehicles sit against the agreed sales, rental and service line items. What the stand brought in is something you read off, instead of gathering it together after the fair.