Engineer-to-Order Manufacturers
Carry engineering hours, long-lead purchased items, and mid-build change on the same job the floor books time against.
The order arrives before the design does. Engineering happens inside the job, the bill of materials grows as you go, and the cost is only final when the thing ships.
An engineer-to-order shop sells a promise and then designs the thing it promised. The quote is built from a concept sketch and a memory of the last one that looked like it, the bill of materials is still being released by level when the first plate hits the burn table, and the only honest margin number arrives after the crate ships. WorkCell treats the project as the cost object rather than the part: every posting, from a designer's hours to a weldment operation to the freight on a gearbox, is stamped with the Job it belongs to. Finite capacity scheduling plans against real machines and real people, with proposal runs so a planner can test a resequence before anyone promises a date. Revisions are effective dated, so a serial still resolves to what it was actually built to.
Estimators price design hours for something that does not exist yet, usually by analogy to the last similar machine and a gut-feel multiplier. Nobody ever goes back to compare the estimated hours against what engineering actually burned, so the next quote inherits the same error. The pattern repeats until a whole class of work is quietly unprofitable and the shop cannot say which class.
Design, drafting, fixture concepts, and the three days spent reworking a layout after the customer saw the model are all real cost on a specific project. Pushed into a general overhead pool, they get spread evenly across jobs that consumed wildly different amounts of engineering. The simple machine subsidizes the hard one, and the margin report tells you the opposite of what happened.
Long-lead structure gets released at level one so the frame can be cut while the control package is still being specified. That is normal and necessary, but it means purchasing is buying against an incomplete structure, and a part added at week six has no planned cost, no planned labor, and no place in the original schedule. It shows up as a surprise in the final cost, and the only person who could have caught it was the project engineer who added the part in the first place.
A twenty-week gearbox, a casting with a single qualified foundry, or a drive package on allocation sets the date for everything downstream. A static plan assumes it lands when the acknowledgement said it would. When it slips two weeks, nothing in a spreadsheet moves, so the shop keeps building toward a date it has already lost and finds out when the customer asks for a shipping notice.
A dimension changes after three of the five units are welded. Now two revisions exist in the same order, the paper traveler on the floor is the old one, and the as-built package for unit three does not match the drawing in the file. A year later, a spare part request against that serial gets answered from the wrong revision and the customer gets a part that does not fit.
Project costing with the Job as the cost object
Every posting in WorkCell is stamped with the Job it belongs to: labor clocked at a terminal, material issued from stock, purchased items received against the project, and scrap recorded at the operation. Cost accumulates as work happens rather than at a month-end rollup, so the project margin on a six-month build is visible in month two, while there is still time to do something about it.
Estimating that carries into the job it becomes
Quoting and estimating build the structure and the hours you intend to spend, and the job inherits them as the plan to compare against. When the estimate held and when it did not is a query on real postings instead of a conversation, so the next quote for that class of machine starts from measured history rather than the same multiplier that has been wrong three times running.
Multi-level bills of material released by level
Bills of material are multi-level and revisioned with effective dates, so the frame can be released and bought while lower levels are still being engineered. Adding structure later supersedes rather than overwrites, which means the revision in effect when a unit was built stays recoverable after the design has moved on three more times.
Finite capacity scheduling with proposal runs
The scheduler plans against actual machine and labor capacity rather than assuming infinite capacity, and a proposal run lets a planner model a sequence before committing it. When the gearbox slips, you see which operations and which promised dates move before you pick up the phone, rather than discovering it at the end.
Serial traceability with as-built genealogy
Lots and serials stay linked from receiving through issue, operation, and shipment, so a finished serial resolves backward to the material lots in it, the operations run on it, who ran them, and the inspection results recorded against it. Five units on one order with three revisions between them each keep their own record, which is what a spare part request against a ten-year-old serial needs answered correctly.
Purchasing against the project, in the supplier's currency
Long-lead items are bought against the project from a supplier catalog, with multi-currency conversion and unit-of-measure conversion handled on the way in, so a casting quoted in euros per kilogram lands in the job cost in your currency and your units without anyone keeping a side spreadsheet of conversions.
Multi-level bills of material and routings, revisioned and effective dated.
PurchasingLong-lead items bought against the project, with multi-currency conversion.
ProductionFinite scheduling, proposal runs, and terminals capturing time and scrap.
AccountingJob costing posted as work happens, with every entry stamped to a Job.
Quoting, engineering, purchasing, scheduling, shop floor, and job costing on one database.
APSFinite capacity scheduling for long-lead, low-volume projects that resequence constantly.
MESOperator terminals capturing quantities, scrap, and time at the operation.
ECCRevision and effective dating so a serial resolves to the structure it was built to.
Cut, form, and weld work that often feeds the same engineered builds.
Industrial EquipmentCapital machinery built to order, with serialized spares behind it.
EstimatorWhat quoting looks like when the estimate carries into the job.
ProductionFinite scheduling, proposal runs, and shop floor capture.
How do you estimate engineering hours for a machine nobody has designed yet?
By comparing against what similar projects actually consumed instead of a multiplier. WorkCell posts design and drafting hours to the Job, so last year's comparable build has a real engineering number. Your estimate is still a judgment, but it is anchored to measured history rather than to the memory of whoever quoted it last.
Should engineering time be in the job cost or in overhead?
In the job cost, because engineering effort varies enormously between projects and overhead spreads it evenly. A one-off with four weeks of layout work and a repeat build with none should not carry the same engineering burden. WorkCell lets engineering hours post to the project like any other labor, so the margin report reflects what each build cost.
Can we start cutting before the whole bill of materials is released?
Yes. Bills of material are multi-level and effective dated, so the frame can be released, bought, and scheduled while lower levels are still being engineered. Later levels supersede rather than overwrite, and postings against the job keep accumulating cost regardless of how complete the structure was when work started.
A twenty-week casting just slipped. What does that do to my other promises?
Run it as a proposal before you commit. Finite capacity scheduling replans against real machine and labor capacity, so you see which downstream operations and which promised dates move. WorkCell does not yet run live material planning, so the slipped purchase order is your input to the schedule, not something netted automatically.
The design changed halfway through a five-unit order. How does the as-built record stay honest?
Each unit keeps its own serial record tied to the revision in effect when it was built, plus the lots issued and the operations run. WorkCell handles engineering change as versioning with effective dates, not as a routed approval workflow with sign-offs, so the record is accurate but the approval process stays yours.
Is this a fit for a shop that builds one or two machines at a time?
Yes. WorkCell is built for discrete manufacturers from roughly ten to a thousand employees, and engineer-to-order work is the case project costing exists for. A shop running two concurrent builds and a handful of spares orders is a normal shape, not an edge case the system has to be bent around.
See where WorkCell fits your shop.
Tell us how you quote and cost a build today and we will tell you straight whether WorkCell is a fit.