Example Project · Metal Fabrication
Job costing and shop-floor tracking for a custom fabrication shop
Example Project
An illustrative project based on recurring patterns. Not a named client; no client results are claimed.
- Industry
- Metal Fabrication
- Previous system
- Spreadsheet estimating, desktop accounting, paper job travellers
01 — Problem
The situation
A 45-person fabrication shop quotes custom work from a spreadsheet built by its owner. Material is bought in bulk without visibility of job requirements, and actual labour hours are never compared with estimates.
Customers in energy and construction increasingly ask for mill certificates and heat-number traceability, which takes hours to assemble from paper files.
02 — Requirements
What the new system had to do
- Standardised estimating linked to jobs
- Material requirements aggregated across jobs
- Heat-number traceability with certificates
- Operator time capture by operation
- Estimate-versus-actual reporting
- Integration with nesting software
03 — Solution
The approach
Estimates are built inside the ERP from materials, operations and outside processing. Accepted estimates create jobs with planned materials and routings.
Operators clock on and off operations using tablets at each work centre. Mill certificates are attached at receipt and follow heat numbers through to shipping documents.
04 — Architecture
How it fits together
The ERP owns estimates, jobs, inventory and accounting. Nesting software receives part lists and returns nest results with material usage via file-based exchange automated by a small integration service.
Integrations
- — Nesting software (file exchange)
- — Accounting migration from desktop package
- — Carrier platform
05 — Implementation
How the work would be phased
- 01
Rate and estimating workshop
Agreed labour, machine and overhead rates.
- 02
Core jobs and inventory
Jobs, purchasing and heat-number tracking live first.
- 03
Shop-floor rollout
Tablets introduced work centre by work centre.
- 04
Feedback loop
Monthly estimate-versus-actual review.
06 — Expected outcome
What this design is meant to achieve
The intended result is a closed loop from estimate to actual cost, so pricing decisions are based on measured job history, and traceability requests are answered from the system.
Outcomes describe the intended operational result of this design, not measured client results.
Next step
Planning something similar?
We will map this pattern onto your operation and tell you what would be different.