From rule of thumb to cost line.

Where it starts

A subcontractor with no product of its own. Drawings and STEP files keep coming in from customers across industry: a bracket, a flange, an aluminium frame, a stainless shaft. Most in small quantities, many slightly different from the last, and some come back as a repeat order or a new revision.

The first question is not the price. Does it fit our machines? Can we hold the tolerances, and can we measure them and prove them to the customer? Only then come the stock, the supplier's price and the time.

How it usually runs

Time comes from experience. Rules of thumb help: count the holes, allow a fixed time per hole, and sanity-check the total on feel. The price is programming, setup, cycle time, material and finishing, divided by the quantity.

The work is spread across the mailbox, the drawings, emails to suppliers and the ERP. The choice between 3- and 5-axis, and how to fixture a part, lives in a few heads. A new colleague picks that up only slowly.

What Blake prepares

Blake turns those rules of thumb into fixed lines with their time, rate and quantity. Model and drawing paired per part, with material, tolerance, roughness, finishing and threads as proposals. A first check per machine on envelope and axes, with the limit that decides it. A tolerance that lives only on the drawing sits next to the model.

You record setups per route. The cost sits on lines: material, machining, finishing, setup and programming, each at the machine's hourly rate. Quantity breaks use the same build-up. Outsourced anodising is its own line from your own library; if the price is missing, it stays open. A repeat part sits next to its last priced estimate. More on high-mix precision machining and on estimating.

Where people decide

Fixturing stays a craft. Start on the solid side. On five axes a part often goes in two setups where three axes needs more. Keep fixture plates outside the part. Those are the manufacturing engineer's calls, and in Blake they sit with the route they were made for. The choice between three and five axes stays with him too; Blake shows per machine whether the part fits and, if not, which limit stops it.

Whoever corrects an estimate gives a reason. It stays on record with who and when. So the gut feel that once checked a total becomes a line the next colleague can read.

What it comes down to

A rule of thumb only becomes a line when it shows its time, rate and quantity. Then a colleague can read it, and the actual time of an order can sit next to it later. The choice between three and five axes and the fixturing stay a craft; in Blake they sit with the route they were made for.

Today a request starts with an upload of STEP and PDF. More on your factory in Blake.

Key points

• Makeable and measurable first, then a price.
• Rules of thumb become lines: time, rate and quantity on every item.
• Setups and corrections live with the part, not in someone's head.
• A repeat part starts from its last priced estimate.