Machine Shops
Price setup against cycle time, see which jobs the tooling spend went to, and plan the machines you actually own.
CNC and precision machining to customer prints, where setup time and spindle hours decide the margin.
Machine shop margin is decided twice: once when somebody prices setup against cycle time, and once on the floor when setup takes six hours instead of three. Between those two moments most shops have no instrumentation. Tooling disappears into the shop rate, programming time is absorbed into the first piece, and the only verdict is whether the year was good. WorkCell makes the verdict per operation instead. The estimate becomes the routing, operators clock setup and run separately at a terminal, scrap is recorded where it happened, and job cost accumulates as the work moves. Finite capacity scheduling plans against the machines you own rather than an imaginary free spindle, so a hot job shows what it displaces before you take it.
Setup is a fixed cost amortized across the order and run time is per piece, which means they behave completely differently at quantity ten and quantity five hundred. A shop that records one number for the whole operation cannot tell which half was wrong. A six-hour setup quoted at three is indistinguishable from a cycle time that drifted, and both get fixed by raising the shop rate on everything.
Inserts, drills, abrasives and coolant are usually folded into an hourly rate, which works until a job runs hard material and eats a month of inserts. Nothing links that spend to the job that caused it, so the next quote for the same part uses the same rate as an aluminum job. Special tooling and fixtures then become a separate argument about who pays and when, usually settled by charging a percentage of the tool against the first order and hoping the repeat arrives.
The CAM work, the soft jaws, the fixture plate and the first-article iteration are real hours that get absorbed into the first piece or waved away as overhead. When they are not steps on a routing, nobody can say what a new part number costs to bring up, and that is exactly the number a shop needs when it decides whether low-quantity work is worth taking at all.
A machine sits because material is late, the fixture is on another job, the program is not proved, or the operator is on the far side of the shop. Each is a different problem with a different fix, but the shop only sees the aggregate: fewer hours billed than the jobs that were supposed to run. Utilization stays an argument because nothing attaches the loss to a cause, and the fix chosen is usually another machine rather than a schedule that keeps the current ones fed.
Running unattended needs proved programs, predictable tool life and a schedule that puts the right long-cycle job on the machine overnight. Shops reach for pallet pools and probing before they can say which jobs reliably run to their cycle time, and the night shift becomes a source of scrap discovered the next morning with no record of when it started.
Setup and run captured separately on the operation
Operators clock setup and clock run at the terminal, so the two costs stay apart from the estimate through to the variance report. Pricing the same part at quantity ten and quantity four hundred stops being an argument about shop rate and becomes arithmetic on numbers the shop measured itself on the last order. A setup that reliably takes six hours stops being a surprise and starts being a standard you can quote against.
Job cost posted as the work happens
Labor, material issues and completions post against the job as a cost object the moment they are recorded. Material and purchased items charged to a job land on the part that consumed them, so the insert spend on a hard-material job is visible against that job instead of being averaged into every hour the shop sells.
Routings with the operations nobody usually counts
Programming, fixture build, deburr, first article and rework can each be an operation with its own setup, run time and work center. The hours they consume become visible, which is the only way a shop finds out what bringing up a new part number costs before it quotes the second order for it.
Scrap recorded at the operation that made it
Good and scrapped quantities are entered where the work happened rather than reconciled at the end of the job. A part lost at operation forty carries the cost of the thirty-nine operations in front of it, and the shop can see which machine, which operator and which program the loss came from.
Finite capacity scheduling against the machines you own
The scheduler knows the five-axis is one machine and that two jobs cannot both have it on Tuesday. Proposal runs let a planner try a sequence, see which dates it breaks, and commit or discard it. Loading the overnight machine with the long-cycle job becomes a planning decision rather than a hope.
Inspection in the routing, with the results kept
AQL sampling plans and inspection templates define what gets checked and when. Results are recorded at the operation against the revision in effect, a failure raises a severity-classified nonconformance, and a systemic problem escalates to an 8-D. First article results stay attached to the part and the revision rather than to a folder on a share that the next operator cannot find.
Versioned bills of material and routings with setup and run time per operation.
ProductionFinite capacity scheduling and terminals capturing setup, run, quantity and scrap.
QualityAQL sampling, inspection templates, nonconformances and 8-D corrective action.
AccountingJob costing posted as hours and material land, down to the operation.
Quoting, engineering, inventory, scheduling, shop floor and job costing on one database.
MESTerminals that capture setup, run, quantity, scrap and inspection at the machine.
APSFinite capacity scheduling for a high-mix floor with a shared bottleneck machine.
OEEThe machine monitoring category, which reads signals off controls rather than from operators.
One-off and short-run work where the quote is the whole business.
Tool and Die ShopsLong, one-off builds where tryout iteration is the real content of the job.
Aerospace & DefenseLow-volume precision work under AS9100 flow-downs and full traceability.
ProductionScheduling, work orders and the terminals the floor actually uses.
How do you handle tooling cost when quoting a job?
Most shops bury perishable tooling in the hourly rate and break out only special tooling and fixtures as a one-time charge. WorkCell charges material and purchased items to the job that consumed them, so the insert spend on a hard-material part is visible against it rather than averaged into every hour you sell.
Does WorkCell read spindle data off my machines?
No. There is no MTConnect or OPC-UA connection and no packaged overall-equipment-effectiveness dashboard. Time, quantity and scrap come from operators at a shop floor terminal. If you want machine signals, that is a monitoring product running alongside WorkCell rather than something WorkCell does itself.
Should setup and cycle time be quoted as one number?
No, because they scale differently. Setup is amortized across the order and cycle time is per piece, so the same operation prices very differently at ten parts and four hundred. WorkCell keeps them separate in the estimate, on the terminal and in the variance report, which is where the pricing error usually hides.
How do I find out what a new part number costs to bring up?
Make programming, fixture build and first article real operations on the routing. Operators clock them like any other step, so the first-run cost of a part shows up as hours against those operations. The second order then prices off what the bring-up actually took instead of a guess about overhead.
Can WorkCell schedule a long-cycle job for an unattended overnight run?
The scheduler plans against finite machine and labor capacity, and proposal runs let you test the sequence before committing, so putting the long-cycle job on the machine that runs unattended is a planning decision you can make deliberately. WorkCell does not prove the program or watch the machine while it runs.
Does WorkCell manage the tool crib?
No. There is no tool crib or tooling inventory module, no tool life tracking and no presetter integration. Tooling bought for a job can be charged to that job, and fixture build can be a routing operation, but managing holders, assemblies and gauge calibration is not something WorkCell does today.
See where WorkCell fits your shop.
Tell us how you price setup and track hours today and we will tell you straight whether WorkCell is a fit.