Looking for an Costing Template with actual values 1

[SBaugh]

I am looking for someone that might be willing to share their Costing Template that has some accurate information in it. We want to use Costing to get a general idea of how much it costs to make a laser cut or bend Stainless steel.

I posted on the Solidworks Forums, (I know I have said this before) but I guess I black flagged myself from getting any help from anyone on there. Getting to old to worry about what people think about my opinion.

https://forum.solidworks.com/thread/97592

Scott Baugh, CSWP
Gryphon Environmental

http://www.2gryphon.com

"If it's not broke, Don't fix it!"

faq731-376

 

[Updraft]

Scott,

The best I've seen relevant to bends and laser cutting is a rate for bends such as $x/bend and $y/inch for laser cutting as a means to estimate costs. These were based on time studies/observations based on a number parts and bends per hour. For instance, a worker made 16 different parts in an hour with a total of 53 bends therefore shop hourly rate divided by 53 bends = $x/bend. Similarly laser cutting so many parts in an hour with a total of z inches. . . You'd have to get the time standards relevant to your shop as the efficiency and labor rates would vary dramatically from one shop to another. I wish I could help more, but we aren't a sheet metal shop ourselves.

- - -Updraft

 

[SBaugh]

Thanks reply Updraft!

We are not doing any of this ourselves either. We are having everything sent out, but for Costing to be even close to right the template would have to have some accurate numbers. Everything in the Default Template is not about how many bends or inches are cut in X time, its just costs this much per bend using this material, plus setup cost. However if our company is not doing this our self, then the costing does us no good. Which really sucks for those that would like to get a close estimate. I would be nice if we could add Sheet sizes and the cost of the sheet we can get from our supplier and have that figured in similar to like a nesting tool. I think if SW would adopt some nesting software it could finally be a standalone SM tool or close to it.

Kind Regards,



Scott Baugh, CSWP
Gryphon Environmental

http://www.2gryphon.com

"If it's not broke, Don't fix it!"

faq731-376

 

[Updraft]

Scott,

I assumed you were doing this in-house. Since you are not perhaps you can get with the vendor you have the best relationship with and get them to give you the type of information you are looking for. Be prepared as this can be so frustrating! Every vendor thinks you are trying to rip them off or undercut them, when actually all you are trying to do is learn what drives the cost and to have a decent estimate before even bothering them. It will take some work, but you might be able to get them to understand that it is a big benefit to them if you can pre-estimate your designs which will help you to refine your design before asking them for a final quote. With this information you will be able to iterate your designs with a good idea of their costs and they will only be quoting once on the actual job. You will need material costs, setup, and whatever drives the fabrication costs (number of bends or burn time/distance). The laser burn time is a function of material type, thickness and length.

If your vendor(s) will not cooperate then your best bet is to do a back-door estimate. You'll need the costs of as many different parts you've had run recently and then plot those costs against the parameters that you think are driving the costs. I've done something like this before and it takes some patience coupled with some insight as to what it takes to make the parts, but you can develop a general costing formula that might be good enough.

If your vendor is not using some sort of auto-nesting software then they (and you) will benefit tremendously by getting them to start using it. At a previous place I worked we had our own sheet metal shop with two turret presses and three NC press brakes. We had been making all of one part per sheet, i.e., the part's punch program was just repeated as many times as would fit on a single sheet. Our punch press was always the bottleneck (everyone should read The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt). We invested $20k in some auto-nesting software and $5k for a week's training. Long story short - we saved over $225/yr in material utilization alone, not to mention the reduction in WIP and inventory. The punch presses were no longer the bottleneck. Though we know our cost to produce went down we did not worry about rolling our standard costs until the end of the year. I got a huge raise out of the deal and the company financials improved dramatically. If your vendor is a job shop then this should be especially valuable to them as the mix of parts and the variable quantities is a perfect situation for the auto-nesting software.

- - -Updraft