Metal Manufacturing
Hold the mill cert to the heat lot, the heat lot to the finished piece, and the plating vendor to a date — on the same system that schedules the brake.
Metal shops carry two kinds of risk a general-purpose ERP never models. The first is the material itself: a heat lot and its mill test report follow a plate, a coil, or a bar through cutting, forming, welding, and plating, and the certification has to still be attached when the customer asks months later. The second is the gap in the middle of the routing, where parts leave the building for heat treat, plating, or anodize and sit on someone else's floor while the job clock keeps running. WorkCell tracks both inside the job rather than beside it. Receiving captures the lot and its cert, issues preserve the link, subcontracted operations stay visible as steps in the sequence, and finite capacity scheduling plans the press brake and the laser against the hours they actually have.
Sheet metal fabricators, stampers, precision machine shops, weld shops, tube and roll formers, and metal service centers running high-mix work to customer prints, usually with outside processing somewhere in the routing.
| Standard | What It Requires |
|---|---|
| ISO 9001 | Document control, identification and traceability, control of nonconforming output, and corrective action — the baseline most metal customers audit against. |
| AS9100 | Added for fabricators and machinists feeding aerospace: configuration management, counterfeit part prevention, first article inspection, and tighter traceability than ISO 9001 alone. |
| IATF 16949 | Added for stampers and machinists on automotive programs: traceability planning by risk, control plans, PFMEA, MSA, SPC, and PPAP evidence per part number. |
| Nadcap | Accreditation of special processes — heat treat, plating, chemical processing, welding, NDT — which usually means your outside processor must hold it and you must prove you used an approved source. |
| REACH | Substances of very high concern declared through the supply chain, which in metal work most often lands on coatings, passivation, and plating chemistry. |
A receipt records the heat or mill lot and attaches its certification — the EN 10204 3.1 or ASTM-referenced mill test report that names the chemistry and mechanicals. Every issue to a job inherits the link, so the piece coming off the brake still resolves back to the heat it was cut from, through the plating operation in the middle of the routing, and the certs for a shipment come back as a query against the lots consumed rather than a search of a supplier's email thread.
Stored against the receiving lot rather than a folder, so the cert follows the material into every job it feeds and can be produced per shipment years later.
Generated from the job record, tying the shipped quantity to the heat lots, serials, completed operations, and inspections behind it.
Measured values captured at the operation against the characteristic and the routing revision in effect, rather than transcribed into a workbook afterwards.
Severity-classified nonconformances with disposition and containment — rework, scrap, use-as-is — closed by an 8-D when the cause is systemic.
The routing printed as it actually runs, including the operations that happen at a vendor, so nothing is a blank line between weld and inspection.
The material arrives with a PDF cert that someone saves, and the heat number gets handwritten onto a traveler if the job calls for it. Two years later a customer asks for the certs behind a shipment and the answer depends on whether the right person still works there.
Parts go to plating on Tuesday and come back when they come back. Tracking lives on a whiteboard — sent, due, returned — and the job shows as idle in whatever system you have. When the vendor slips a week, nothing downstream reschedules and the customer hears about it from you late.
A sheet is issued whole, the nest yields what it yields, and the difference becomes an unexplained variance. Usable drops go on a rack that only the oldest guy can navigate, so the shop buys full sheets while five hundred pounds of the same alloy sits twenty feet away.
One brake, one laser, and a queue decided by expediting. A spreadsheet plan assumes every machine is free when the job reaches it, which is never true, so promised dates are guesses and the shop finds out which ones were wrong at shipping.
Nobody knows the real hours on a repeat part because labor was never captured at the operation, so the estimator adds a fudge factor and hopes. The jobs that lose money keep getting requoted at the same price because the cost record was never joined to the part.
Heat lot traceability with the cert attached at receiving
The lot and its mill test report are recorded once, at the receipt, and every issue to a job inherits the link. No operator retypes a heat number onto a traveler, and no finished piece loses its chemistry because the paperwork took a different route than the metal.
Subcontracted operations that stay in the routing
Plating, heat treat, and anodize are operations flagged as subcontracted, so they occupy a place and a duration in the sequence instead of a hole in the traveler. The vendor's purchase order and invoice post to the job, so the cost of outside work lands on the part, not in overhead.
Piece-level inventory with scrap recorded where it happens
Inventory is tracked in pieces as well as weight and length, and operators report scrap at the operation that produced it rather than at the end of the job. The yield conversation is then about a number the system holds, not a number somebody remembers.
Inspection, nonconformance, and corrective action in one loop
AQL sampling plans and inspection templates drive what gets checked. A failure raises a severity-classified nonconformance with a disposition, and a repeat cause escalates into an 8-D, all of it attached to the job, the heat lot, and the operation it came from.
Finite capacity scheduling for the machines you actually have
The scheduler plans against real machine and labor capacity rather than infinite capacity, and a proposal run lets a planner test a sequence before committing it. When the laser goes down or plating slips, you see which deliveries move before you call anyone.
Job costing stamped on every posting
Labor clocked at a terminal, material issued, scrap reported, and a plating invoice all carry a job as their cost object. The next quote on a repeat part starts from what the last one cost, which is the difference between estimating and guessing.
Heat lot and serial traceability in pieces, weight, and length, with certs held at the receipt.
PurchasingMaterial and outside processing bought against the job, with supplier catalog pricing.
ProductionFinite capacity scheduling, subcontracted operations, and terminals that capture hours and scrap.
QualityAQL inspections, severity-classified nonconformances, and 8-D corrective action.
Quoting, purchasing, inventory, scheduling, shop floor, and job costing on one database.
MESOperator terminals capturing real hours, good and scrap quantities, and inspection results at the machine.
APSFinite capacity scheduling around the one brake, the one laser, and a plating vendor's lead time.
QMSMaterial certs, inspection records, nonconformances, and corrective action tied to the heat lot.
Cutting, forming, and welding to customer prints, with outside processing in the routing.
Machine ShopsPrecision machining shops running high-mix, low-volume work off customer drawings.
Job ShopsMake-to-order shops where every job is quoted, scheduled, and costed on its own.
AutomotiveStamping and machining on automotive programs under IATF 16949 and PPAP.
How do I track parts that are out at plating or heat treat?
It is a routing step. The operation is flagged as subcontracted, so plating sits in the sequence with its own time rather than as a hole in the traveler, and the vendor's purchase order and invoice post to the job's cost. Raising that PO is still a purchasing action, not generated from the operation.
How does WorkCell handle material traceability without slowing receiving down?
Receiving records the heat or mill lot once and attaches the certification to it. Every issue to a job inherits the link, so nobody retypes a heat number onto a traveler. Pulling the certs for a shipment is a query against the lots consumed, not a hunt through a supplier email thread.
Do I have to lot-track everything, or only the parts that need it?
Only what needs it. Lot and serial tracking is a setting per item, not a global switch, so A36 plate for a shop fixture can run untracked while the 4140 bar feeding a certified job carries its heat lot. Forcing lot numbers onto hardware and consumables is how shops end up ignoring the system.
Does WorkCell do nesting?
No, and it should not. Nesting and yield optimization belong in your CAM or nesting software. WorkCell handles what comes after: the sheet issued to the job, the pieces completed, the scrap reported at the operation, and the drop left over as a quantity you can account for instead of a mystery on the rack.
Can we keep running paper travelers?
You can print one, but the point is to stop transcribing it. Operators clock on to an operation at a terminal and record quantity, scrap, and inspection results there, so the hours and the quality record enter once. Shops that keep the paper usually keep it as a drawing packet, not a data entry form.
Is this overkill for a fifteen-person fab shop?
Probably, if a whiteboard and QuickBooks are working. Core is $995 a month with unlimited users, which is real money at that size. The shops it pays for are the ones where certs, outside processing, and a bottleneck machine already cost somebody a full day a week in chasing.
See it run on your parts.
Tell us how material, certs, and outside processing move through your shop today and we will tell you straight whether WorkCell is a fit.