ERP for precision engineering and subcontract machining
Costing by operation, setup time kept apart from run time, drawing revisions and dimensional inspection reports: the ERP for a workshop where margin is decided by the second of spindle time.
Mechanical engineering
- Routing library and costing by operation
- Shop floor clocking, setup and run
- Drawings and definition revisions
Unit cost is counted in seconds
A machining quotation is a bet on times. The routing states a theoretical time per operation, the workshop consumes a real time, and the gap between the two is most of the margin. That gap still has to be measured at the level where it arises: the operation, not the order.
Setup time is the more poorly handled of the two. It does not behave like run time: it is incurred once, whatever the number of parts. Underestimated on a batch of twenty parts, it wipes out the margin of the whole batch; on a long run it dilutes to the point of no longer being visible. Merging the two into an average time amounts to overcharging the long runs and losing money on the short ones, without ever knowing which is which.
To this is added the pressure of the response time. A tender is often decided in a few days, and the quotation is then rebuilt by hand, operation by operation: turning, milling, grinding, deburring, inspection. Quoting fast and quoting right remain at odds for as long as routings already run cannot be reused as a costing basis.
There remains what unit cost almost always ignores: cutting tool consumption. Inserts, drills and cutters have a life that depends on the material machined and on the cutting conditions. That spend is real, but it is rarely tied to the works order that caused it, and so absent from the cost of the part.
Machining the right version, and being able to prove it
The leading cause of scrap in subcontract machining is not the machine, it is the drawing. A part machined to a superseded revision conforms to the document the operator had in front of him and is rejected at goods inwards. The problem repeats itself years later: a repeat order has to find its routing and its drawing at the revision in force, long after the departure of whoever prepared it.
Then comes what has to be inspected. General tolerances refer to ISO 2768, geometrical tolerancing to the GPS language and to ISO 1101: flatness, coaxiality, position, specified datums. These requirements are measured with instruments whose calibration carries a periodicity and a traceability chain, and an informed customer will ask for the inspection report before accepting the batch. On parts monitored under SPC, he will also expect usable measurement records and the Cp and Cpk capability indices that follow from them.
The third blind spot is subcontracted treatment. A part sent out for heat treatment or surface treatment leaves the workshop in the middle of its routing. The work in progress becomes invisible, the lead time depends on a third party, and the cost of the operation must nonetheless enter the margin of the part.
AVIA ERP versions the routing and the bill of materials by revision and ties the drawing to the operation, so that work in progress keeps the definition it was released on. Shop floor clocking separates setup from run, treatment operations follow a subcontracting flow that keeps the work in progress valued at the third party, and inspection records stay attached to the batch they qualify.
What a machine shop expects from its ERP
- Routing library and costing by operationCosting broken down by machining operation, with setup time and run time entered separately. A routing already run serves as the basis for a new quotation, which makes a fast reply compatible with a costing you can argue for.
- Shop floor clocking, setup and runDeclaration at the workstation, the operation and the machine, with setup distinguished from production. The variance against the routing time reads by operation, by machine and by job, at the level at which it can be acted on.
- Drawings and definition revisionsRouting and bill of materials versioned by revision, drawing tied to the operation and issued to the workstation. Work in progress stays on its original definition while new releases move to the latest approved revision.
- Dimensional inspection and reportsMeasurement records entered at the workstation, tied to the batch and the order number, with the inspection report the customer expects. The records feed the control charts and the calculation of the capability indices.
- Subcontracted heat and surface treatmentsSubcontract operation embedded in the routing: issue note, tracking of the departure and the return, work in progress valued at the third party and the cost of the treatment fed back into the unit cost of the part.
- Cutting tools and measuring instrumentsA register of tooling and instruments assigned to machines, with a history of interventions and validity dates. An overdue date falls under the same mechanism as equipment qualifications, whose expiry blocks clocking.
The direct benefits for your industrial company
Setup stops being buried in run time
Clocked separately, it appears for what it is: a fixed cost per batch, which explains why short runs behave differently from long ones.
Replying fast without quoting by guesswork
The quotation is built on routings and times already observed in the workshop rather than on an estimate redone for every tender.
No more parts machined to a superseded drawing
The revision carried by the routing and the drawing issued to the workstation make mixed definitions impossible, including on an order reissued years later.
The inspection file follows the part
Measurement records, reports and non-conformances stay attached to the batch. The customer's request is met from the system, with nothing to reconstruct.
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Precision engineering.
The industries AVIA ERP covers
Every industrial sector demands its own rigour. AVIA adapts to your regulatory constraints through focused domain modules.
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