Contract Manufacturers
Build to their print and their revision, keep their material and their data separate, and know what the program actually earns.
Customer programs run over years, each with its own revisions, requirements and reporting.
A contract manufacturer does not own the design, the part number, or the end customer. What it owns is the record: which revision a lot was built to, which of the customer's material went into it, which inspections passed, and what the program cost to run in a year when copper moved and the price did not. WorkCell keeps that record as a by-product of the work. Bills of material and routings are revisioned and effective dated, so a shipment made in March still resolves to the March print. Every posting is stamped with the Job, so program margin is a query rather than a quarterly reconstruction. Inspections, nonconformances, and corrective actions attach to the job that produced them, which is what a customer flowdown audit asks to see.
The print belongs to the customer, so revision changes arrive as an email, a portal notification, or a note on a purchase order line. Somebody has to get that into the routing, the inspection sheet, and the traveler before the next lot starts. When it lands a day late, a run goes out to the old revision and the discovery happens at the customer's receiving dock.
Consigned stock, free-issue components, and customer tooling are the customer's property but your responsibility. They do not belong in your valuation, they cannot be commingled, and loss or damage has to be reported back. Most shops end up tracking them on a whiteboard or a spreadsheet, which means the only person who knows the real balance is the one who maintains it. When the customer asks for a reconciliation, the count happens twice: once on the floor and once against a file nobody trusts.
Pricing is agreed at program award, often with an annual reduction written into the contract. Material escalates, labor rates move, and a process change on your side quietly adds a second operation. Without cost posted against the program as work happens, the erosion is invisible until a year-end review, which is far too late to negotiate anything about it.
The customer's own certification obligations arrive as requirements on you: inspection frequencies, source inspection, certificates of conformance, first article submissions, retained samples. Each program words it differently. Assembling that evidence out of spreadsheets, scanned sheets, and a paper traveler turns every audit and every shipment package into manual archaeology. The work was done correctly; proving it is the expensive part.
Two customers in the same market, both under NDA, both with parts running through the same cell this week. Their prints, their pricing, and their quality history must not be visible to the wrong people, and a shared network folder governed by convention is not an answer anyone wants to give on an audit. Access has to be enforced by the system.
The revision a lot was actually built to
Bills of material and routings carry a revision and an effective date, and a change supersedes rather than overwrites. A lot shipped nine months ago still resolves to the structure, the operations, and the inspection requirements in effect that day, which is the question a customer asks when a field failure traces back to your part number.
Program margin from postings, not from a reconstruction
Labor clocked at a terminal, material issued, scrap recorded, and purchased parts received are all stamped with the Job they belong to. Roll those jobs up by program and the margin is a query against real transactions. When an annual price down lands, you negotiate with the cost record in front of you instead of a feeling about it. The same rollup answers which programs are worth requoting and which are worth walking away from at renewal.
Lot and serial traceability through the whole build
Receiving records the lot, issues to a job preserve the link, and completions assign lots or serials, so as-built genealogy holds without a parallel log. A containment question from a customer resolves to the affected lots and the shipments they went into rather than to a week of pulling travelers out of a cabinet.
Inspection, nonconformance, and corrective action in one loop
Inspection templates and AQL sampling plans drive what gets checked and how often. Failures raise a severity-classified nonconformance with disposition, and systemic issues escalate into an 8-D corrective action. The whole chain stays attached to the job and the lot, which is the evidence a customer flowdown asks you to retain.
Access enforced per role, with tenant isolation
Permissions are enforced by role at the data layer rather than by folder convention, with tenant isolation and single sign-on. Who can see which program's prints, pricing, and quality history is a system setting with an audit trail behind it, which is a far better answer under an NDA review than describing how your shared drive is organized.
Quoting and costing across currencies and units
Programs priced in the customer's currency, bought from suppliers in a third, and specified in units nobody on your floor uses still have to land in one cost record. Multi-currency and unit-of-measure conversion happen on the transaction, so the conversion is not a spreadsheet somebody maintains and nobody checks.
Revisioned, effective-dated bills of material and routings per customer print.
ProductionFinite scheduling and shop floor terminals capturing quantity, scrap, and time.
QualityAQL sampling, inspection templates, nonconformances, and 8-D corrective action.
AccountingJob costing posted as work happens, rolled up by program.
Quoting, engineering, inventory, scheduling, shop floor, and job costing on one database.
MESOperator terminals capturing actuals and inspection results at the operation.
QMSInspections, nonconformances, and corrective actions tied to the job that produced them.
SCMSupplier catalog, purchasing, and receiving against long multi-year programs.
High-mix precision machining run to customer prints.
Tier SuppliersProgram work driven by blanket orders, releases, and supplier scorecards.
QualityInspections, nonconformances, and 8-D corrective action against the job.
ISO 9001What the standard requires and which records WorkCell keeps for it.
How do we control customer-supplied material in a build-to-print shop?
Hold it in its own location and keep the customer's lot identity through every issue to a job, so the balance and the genealogy are in the system rather than on a whiteboard. Be aware that WorkCell has no separate customer-owned ownership type today, so excluding it from valuation is a reporting decision you make.
The customer owns most of our tooling. Is that customer property we have to control?
Yes. Property the customer owns and you hold has to be identified, verified, protected, and reported back if it is lost, damaged, or found unsuitable. In WorkCell that means tooling carried as identified inventory with its own records. There is no distinct customer-property module, so the classification is yours to maintain.
What do we do when the customer changes the print but keeps the same part number?
Supersede the bill of material and routing with a new revision and an effective date, so lots built before the change still resolve to the old structure. WorkCell handles this as versioning, not as a change-request workflow with routed approvals, so the approval and notification process stays in your procedures.
Does consigned material need the same receiving inspection as material we buy?
Not necessarily, and the answer belongs in the contract rather than in software. Many programs agree reduced or waived receiving inspection for consigned product. WorkCell lets you set the inspection template and sampling plan per item, so whatever you and the customer agreed is what the receiver is actually asked to do.
How do we hold margin on a program with an annual price down written into it?
Post cost as the work happens and roll jobs up by program, so erosion shows up in the quarter it starts rather than at a year-end review. Every labor, material, scrap, and receipt posting is stamped with a Job, which gives you a defensible cost history to take into the next price negotiation.
Can two competing customers' programs run on the same system without seeing each other?
Yes, within your organization. Permissions are enforced per role at the data layer with tenant isolation and single sign-on, so program visibility is a system setting with an audit trail. Note that WorkCell is not certified to any standard and SOC 2 is pending, which some customer audits will ask about.
See where WorkCell fits your shop.
Tell us how your programs are priced and audited today and we will tell you straight whether WorkCell is a fit.