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aid manufacturing profitability

Planning the manufacturing process

ESTIM is designed to reduce quoting and planning time and ensuring that the manufacturing process is efficient. Templates are used to simplify the follow steps to evaluate a manufacturing process.

  1. Recall a template to quickly plan the operations needed to make the part
  2. Enter materials - type & size
  3. Add - Delete - Modify manufacturing detail
  4. Enter the Quantities  1 off & 3 off & 10 off
  5. ESTIM quickly calculates Time to make - Cost to make - Materials required.
  6. Output Quotation - Estimate - Tender - Bid price (Printed or e-Mailed)
  7. Print Route cards and Job Tickets
  8. Record design changes and manufacturing history
  9. Link selected data to MRP ERP Accounts (Preactor / Sage / Micross)
  10. Refine the manufacturing detail to produce more accurate figures.

You now have an analysis of a part or assembly.

Computer Aided Process Planning (CAPP)
Computer Aided Estimating (CAE)
Computer Aided Cost Comparison (CACC)

 

Time is Money .


Cost +Plus gives the selling price -
  how long will it take to make?
  how much it will cost to make?
  can I recover the tooling cost?
  what Materials are used in manufacture?
So it should cost - xxx.xx
  See the effect of the learning curve on the time
  Add % markup on materials
  Add % profit margin
  Is the selling price competitive?
  Predict the price in 1 and 2 years
  Is there a quicker method?
The time + work in progress gives the delivery date

 

Link the planning to production control system - Integration utilities, data export and ODBC technology allows the routings + parts' details to be accessed by all departments.  

Most manufactured products require careful planning - Some are more complex than others and take longer to assess.

ESTIM instantly evaluates a change in:-

  • Method of manufacture
  • Stock material size or type
  • Quantity
  • Plant usage
  • Product Design
  • Different Customer
  • Different Supplier
  • More competitive pricing

Typical users are in Aerospace, Marine, Automotive,Switchgear, Fabrication, Sub contract and the Sheetmetal/Plate industry, where machining or technical processes influence cycle time and product pricing is paramount. ESTIM offers accurate and consistent planning -> Job Costing + Operator instructions + Part history + Revision Control + Comparison of Estimated to Actual. Jobs Won/Lost report. Customer performance.

Does Lean manufacturing mean - Manufacturing without making a profit? Or is it accurate, consistent, achievable and profitable work delivered on schedule for customer satisfaction.  

Our software package is delivered with data -- the knowledge of manufacturing technology -- for General Engineering

See our download page for industry specific data sets.

  • Aerospace
  • Fabrication
  • Sheetmetal
  • Gear Cutting
  • General Engineering

There is a presentations available to download :-

 estim.pps

This covers the functionality of ESTIM in depth, and can take  about 40 minutes to run through.   

Profit

Cost of manufacture, sale price, and profit margin are always important issues - they are in fact the key to the success of your business.  ESTIM calculates accurate, consistent, and achievable manufacturing times and costs.

Time

Detailed proposals can be very time consuming to produce and when design changes are made the proposal has to be done all over again ! unless of course you are using ESTIM, because you can simply change the detail concerning the design change and you immediately have your new Time & Price. ESTIM  is many times quicker than the manual method - guessing would be even quicker!

Finding capacity in a busy schedule for a firm delivery date can be a juggling act - ESTIM combined with a capacity planning system such as Preactor gives you the management tool to schedule efficient manufacturing.

Image

The quality and style of your proposal will affect the company's image and reputation - ESTIM produces high quality personalised quotations incorporating drawings, and gives prices for any number of batch quantities.  The system can even be paperless, sending your bid via e-mail.

Details

ESTIM performs estimating and process planning encompassing time study for all manufacturing processes and hand operations time and motion studies. Manufacturing operations
  • Manufacturing times
  • Cycle times
  • Set-up times
  • Basic minutes
  • Standard times
  • Accurate, consistent and achievable times
  • Speeds and feeds
  • Metal removal rates Estim calculates these times for :-
  • Conventional machining
  • CNC machining
  • Special processes
  • Sheet metal
  • Assembly
    • Mechanical
    • Electrical
    • Electronic
  • Gear Cutting
  • Fabrication

 

  • Part Main

    Advanced features

  • Gear cutting and gear grinding
  • Bought out item - by unit - by volume - by length
  • Sheet and bar utilisation
  • sub-assembly costing;
  • Learning curve and power curve;
  • Torque and Thrust

     

    What values does it use to calculate?

  • Data for your own plant list
  • Universally adopted cutting data
  • Speed and feed - depth of cut - surface finish values
  • Cutting Tool types - tips, coated etc.

     

    What the ESTIM cost model can do for you

  • Predict manufacturing costs;
  • Ensure a viable workload;
  • Produce quotations;
  • Facilitate variable mark-up rates;
  • Reduce response time;
  • Calculate machine load times;
  • Material costing;
  • Easy experimentation with different machines, materials, etc.;
  • Bought-out items amortisation;
  • Look at varying batch quantities;
  • Optimise machine utilisation (speed / feed power);
  • Sub-contract monitoring;
  • Comply with BS5750 & ISO 9000 - ISO 9001

     

    Links to other systems

  • Sage (www.defactosolutions.co.uk)
  • Micros (www.kewill.com)
  • GB Efficiency Services Limited ( www.gbesl.com)
  • Preactor for manufacturing scheduling
  • Any Production controls system with linkage options
  • CAM cnc instructions form part of manufacturing history
  • MRP - ERP
  • ODBC Databases
  • Shopfloor documentation
  • Word processing
  • Spreadsheets
  • Sage Sage

     

  • Batch Qty

    Implementation

  • ESTIM can be installed and running in your working environment with little disruption:
  • No work study required;
  • Easy to install
  • Easy to use database

     

    Skills

  • ESTIM is easy to learn, and easy to configure to your manufacturing standard:
  • User-friendly;
  • User configurable system parameters;
  • Customised output;
  • Minimum keyboard use;
  • Reduced errors and omissions;
  • Rework existing routings for revised quotes or operator instructions
  • Removes key-man dependency

     

    Help

  • Full technical training & support ;
  • Detailed user manual
  • Getting Started Manual
  • Context on-line help F1 key
  • Overview PowerPoint Presentation
  • Rapid induction of new staff

Production control linkage

 

Fully documented output from ESTIM provides accurate information for quotations, and in addition serves process planning and production control functions. ESTIM as an add-on module interfaces to many production control systems to provide the technical solution to estimating that a lot of the major systems do not offer.

 

Scheduling ESTIM output with Preactor

Preactor

 

ESTIM gives sub-contractors the edge in estimation

In the highly competitive world of sub-contract machining, the ability to provide accurate and profitable quotations to strict deadlines is essential.  With so many companies bidding for a limited amount of business, estimating accuracy is all-important - cost too high and the job will go elsewhere, too low and there's a risk of winning unprofitable, or even loss-making, work. Written by engineers for engineers across a wide range of manufacturing Industries, ESTIM eliminates guesswork and inaccurate quoting, while reducing estimating time by up to 75%.  The ESTIM system can use data specific to the machines in your plant - not theoretical information and generalisations. As a package, ESTIM forms the basis of manufacturing control and could pay for itself in a single order by avoiding a quoting error costing more than the price of the software licence.

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