Gaffney, SC · I-85 corridor · Cherokee County
A part-time CIO for Gaffney, SC firms.
Parts suppliers and distribution centers on I-85 between Charlotte and Greenville, measured each week on a customer's delivery scorecard.
Systems common in this market. The figure is city population.
The market
What Gaffney looks like from here.
Gaffney is the largest town in Cherokee County, on I-85 roughly halfway between Charlotte and Greenville. Drivers know it for the peach-shaped water tower beside the interstate, and the county's orchards still matter. Many of the jobs around Gaffney are now in plants and distribution centers along I-85, building vehicle chassis, bearings, and other parts for larger manufacturers.
Suppliers in Gaffney work to their customers' schedules, and a missed shipment shows up on a scorecard. Orders arrive through a customer portal, production is tracked in an ERP system, and the on-time figure is rebuilt in a spreadsheet each week. The applications assessment maps those three sources and says which numbers they can support. A base dashboard then shows orders, output, and delivery in one place, inside the company's own Microsoft cloud account. The AI rule comes first, because customer prices and drawings are what staff are most likely to paste into a public AI tool. Blacksburg in Cherokee County and Cowpens just across the Spartanburg line work under the same scorecards.
What we would expect to find here. Many Gaffney suppliers rebuild a customer scorecard by hand every week. The dashboard reads the portal and the ERP system directly once the assessment confirms it can.
Gaffney is a service area, not an office. One team, based in North Carolina, works in your own systems.
Where this has run
A profile close to this setup.
Reporting was three exports reconciled by hand.
Light manufacturer · ~120 staff
The company had a capable IT firm, but no one was directing its work.
Regional wholesale distributor · ~90 staff
Industries in Gaffney
Who we work with here.
Start here
- AI Use Policy — Advisory review
- Applications assessment — Assessment
- Base dashboard deployment — Deployment
Where we work
Around Gaffney and across SC.
Where are you based and do you work remotely?
Third Shift Group LLC is based in North Carolina and works with firms across North and South Carolina. Most of the work runs remotely, against your Microsoft cloud account and your systems. Policy meetings and leadership sessions can be on site where that helps. See where we work for the regions and towns we cover.
Can the dashboard read our customer's supplier portal?
It depends on the portal. Some export orders and scores as a file or through a connection, and some only show them on screen. The applications assessment checks yours and says which, before any reporting is built.
Start here
The first step is the same in every location.
Advisory first, in Gaffney as everywhere else: a written assessment you own.