Drawing completion time
Drawing completion time
(OP)
I am a drafting supervisor at a growing company that is going lean and becoming six sigma based. In doing so, my boss, the Engineering manager, would like me to keep metrics on the drafters. I am expected to have completion times for drawings which I am finding to be near impossible for the fact that depending on the drawing type (detail, assembly, etc.) these times vary greatly. Does any one out there have to adhere to any similar requests and if so, any advise on how to handle this situation?





RE: Drawing completion time
RE: Drawing completion time
I don't think CAD has improved that number, at all.
Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA
RE: Drawing completion time
If your projects are similar enough overall, and one project has only one drafter, you could try measuring completion time by drawing package, but in most cases that is as unsatisfactory as individual drawings.
RE: Drawing completion time
I once did a package of 40 D-size CAD drawings in one week. Another person may take a month.
The times vary among people, software, technique, training, education, etc.
Chris
SolidWorks 10 SP4.0
ctopher's home
SolidWorks Legion
RE: Drawing completion time
"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."
Have you read FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies to make the best use of these Forums?
RE: Drawing completion time
RE: Drawing completion time
RE: Drawing completion time
A) Detail, assembly, ect
B) Type of project (i.e. Perhaps an automanufacturer would seperate based on model or car versus truck)
C) Drafter A, Drafter B, ect
As stated, be sure to further divide up time for different processes: initial drafting, checking, corrections, ect.
Then, once you have all the raw data, you can start determining the effects of variables and start to come up with some generalities.
Be sure to record the time it took for your analysis and include that in your "report" on how long a drawing takes.
The other option of course is to try to explain to the person requesting this information all the variables and difficulty in giving a straight min/drawing answer, but if the requester has their degree in business it will probably just be quicker to do a study.
-- MechEng2005
RE: Drawing completion time
My drafting supervisor friend and I differed dramatically in our evaluations of one experienced designer in particular.
DS liked him because he hardly ever spent any time erasing; if you asked for some new/forgotten feature, he'd 'just' add a bracket for it, changing existing parts only to accommodate the bracket. As a consequence, his designs comprised layered brackets, with horrible tolerance stackups, many unnecessary fasteners, and continuous production problems. There was never any eraser dust in the tray on his drafting board. He was really, really fast at producing terrible designs.
By contrast, the best designers, in my estimation, worked hard at removing parts and fasteners and combining functions, and always had a ton of eraser dust on their boards.
I never found a metric for CAD systems that was as useful as eraser dust.
Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA
RE: Drawing completion time
Some packets that we recieve will have 20 drawings and others will have 1.
Some drawings are in autocad which then need to be converted to inventor, some are already in Inventor.
Some assemblies need all of the components modeled in Inventor when some do not because it is a newer model which is already done in Inventor, and so-on-and-so-forth.
I am trying to avoid going through and breaking out detail drawings, assembly drawings, outline drawings, schematics, etc. because at that point in time they will be paying me just to keep metrics for the department. I was hoping that someone had a generic measurement system that they use that seems to work but it sounds as if you all have the same feeling as I do....it is almost impossible. Wish bossman would accept that answer but instead it's "well you need to improve you system then"
RE: Drawing completion time
There really are a lot of variables to take into account.
Are the folks literally just drafting, or actually designing & tolerancing &...
What is Engineering anyway: FAQ1088-1484: In layman terms, what is "engineering"?
RE: Drawing completion time
RE: Drawing completion time
RE: Drawing completion time
Imagine the reaction of the bean counters. WOW, our productivity just went thru the roof! Woohooo!
Measuring engineers is a very difficult task. If you figure it out you can easily retire, sail, and drink beer.
RE: Drawing completion time
RE: Drawing completion time
From there log how long previous jobs have actually taken and either try and compare similar jobs or just take a larger cross section over a period of time.