Metal Fabrication

The saw, the press and the weld bay all have a queue.

Fabrication is a scheduling problem before it is anything else. The material is usually the easy part; what decides whether a job lands on time is which machine is free and who can weld it. Gydon models the work centres, the minutes and the setup, so a promise is made against capacity rather than against optimism.

Costing

Setup is where fabrication quotes go wrong

Setting a press or a jig takes what it takes whether you are making one or forty. Gydon charges setup to the job rather than spreading it across the units, so the same part does not appear to be worth different amounts on different orders purely because of batch size.

Each stage carries its own rate. Cutting, forming, welding and fitting are not the same money, and a costing that averages them tells you nothing about which operation is eating the margin.

  • Standard minutes per unit and setup minutes per job, held to four decimal places
  • Rates per work centre, so the weld bay prices differently from the saw
  • Planned against actual per stage, collected at the bench rather than estimated
  • Exact decimal arithmetic throughout, because a penny of drift on a long job compounds
A work order in Gydon showing its production steps as tasks, each with an estimate and an owner, in the order the work happens.

The routing, become real steps against a live job.

Hours

Time booked against the operation, not the week

A welder clocking on to a stage at a bench tablet is the only way you find out what a weldment really takes. The hours land against the operation, the job, the work centre and the person, so the same data answers what a job cost and where the week went.

Devices are authorised once from the office and each welder signs on with a PIN or a door card, so every hour is attributed to whoever did the work rather than to whoever set the tablet up. There is no shared login and no password to type at the bay.

The labour tab of a work order in Gydon, listing time booked against the job.

Hours against the job, collected as the work happened.

Outwork

What you have out at the galvaniser

Almost nothing leaves a fabrication shop without going somewhere else first. Frames go to a powder coater, steelwork goes to a galvaniser, and none of it has been sold. It is still yours, sitting in somebody else's yard.

Gydon records what went out and what has come back, so the answer is on a screen rather than in the foreman's head. If the coater runs Gydon as well, the note, the return and the invoice pass between the two systems and their bill arrives already checked against what you actually got back.

A free issue note in Gydon for 48 welded steel bench frames sent to a powder coating subcontractor. A panel across the top explains that free issue moves material between the two companies without a sale, so nothing on it is bought, billed or paid for, and that it has been booked into the partner free issue location, which the sales side cannot promise from. A panel to the side shows the status as expected, the direction as sent by us, the partner and the date issued.

Forty-eight frames out for coating, and not one of them sold.

Modules

What fabricators usually switch on

Manufacturing and Product Costing
Routing, work centres, work orders and cost of goods, with setup counted once per job.
Inventory and Purchasing
Section, plate, sheet and consumables, with batches where material has to be traceable back to a certificate.
Shopfloor App
Clocking on and off an operation at the bay, and the drawing for the part in the same place.
Trading Partners
Free issue out to coaters and platers, and their invoice checked against what came back.
Operations and Logistics
Shipments and rounds where you deliver, or third party carriers where you do not.
Worth knowing
Gydon does not nest parts on a sheet or drive a cutting machine. It costs, schedules and records the work; the CAM side stays where it is.

Bring a weldment and its drawing

We will route it across your work centres, cost it with the setup where it belongs, and show you what the shop floor would have recorded against it.