New parts with no history. Priced line by line.

Where it starts

A co-maker with no product of its own: the work comes on the customer's drawing. The machine park is broad, from small turned work to large parts, from one-offs to series. Above a certain quantity, the work runs unmanned.

Most requests are for a part that has never been made. So there is no previous price to fall back on. Every line has to justify itself.

Small and large, hardened and ground, one-off and series: that variety is exactly what makes the work hard, in the office and on the floor. What holds for one part says little about the next.

How it usually runs

Times, rates and materials are typed in by hand, from experience. A separate spreadsheet decides whether a job runs manned or unmanned. Quantity breaks go like this: price the highest quantity first, then work out the rest by hand. Minimum purchase costs at small quantities make it harder still.

Costing is often done by people who were not hired for it. Good manufacturing engineers are getting scarce, and the know-how is spread over people, spreadsheets and separate systems. When actual time drifts from the estimate, it shows up late.

What Blake prepares

The drawing's requirements sit next to the model, ready as proposals to confirm or adjust.

The cost sits per operation: material, machining, setup and programming each on a line, with time, rate and quantity alongside. Drilling and tapping count too. Quantity breaks use the same build-up, so nobody works back from the highest quantity any more. Outsourced galvanising or coating is its own line from your own library.

Every machine has its own hourly rate, envelope and axes. When a request is a price check on something known, the repeat part sits next to its last priced estimate. More on estimating and on your factory in Blake.

Where people decide

The manufacturing engineer decides route and machine; the cost engineer decides the price. Blake calculates with your own machines, rates and outsourcing, not with an average. Correct a line and the reason stays, with who and when.

What the manufacturing engineer chooses, the cost engineer sees in the lines; what the cost engineer corrects sits with the line, reason attached. So someone who was not hired as a cost engineer can still produce a price an experienced colleague can judge.

What it comes down to

The bar is your own historical prices: with your machine park, tooling and rates loaded, an estimate should land close to your own, and where it drifts, the gap must trace back to a time, a rate or a quantity.

Manned or unmanned, and from which quantity, stays the shop's call; in Blake it sits with the route. More on turning.

Key points

• With new work there is no previous price; every line justifies itself.
• Quantity breaks use the same build-up, not a calculation back from the top.
• Your own machines, rates and outsourcing decide the result.
• A gap with your own price must trace back to time, rate or quantity.