by:
People Logic Software Corporation
Victoria, BC
Canada
Copyright
1995/2003 © People Logic Software Corporation
What
differentiates one product from another?
List and organize
labor processes
Labor
Categories and Labor Items
takeoff™ LIBRARY CONSTRUCTION
Fundamentally what takeoff™ does is it approximates labor and material costs in a parametric fashion. Taking parametrics away from the equation then the costing model is identical to what we do everyday. The material aspect is quite simple and the end result is identical to manual methods. But where we all differ on is the labor cost.
Labor costs are a result of people or machines adding cost to the production process. The more one knows where these cost originate then the more information takeoff™ can utilize and supply as summaries to the entire project. For some shops the labor cost is often imbedded in the material cost and thus difficult to isolate. These shops know nothing about their labor costs and need to do more homework into time tracking to be able to supply takeoff™ with better labor costing data. The detail of activity levels is a function of what you can economically track and what is useful information to know. This could span anywhere from a single activity which accounts for all actions required to manufacture a product to many smaller activities which eventually sum up to the same as if it were a single activity.
Example
No Activity $90 labor cost included in material cost
Single Activity 3 hours of Cabinet Assembly
Multiple Activity 1 1 hour of Machining
1 hour of Door/Drawer Assembly
1 hour of Cabinet Assembly
Multiple Activity 2 .4 hours of Panel Saw
.3 hours Edgebanding
.3 hours CNC
.25 hours Door Assembly
.75 hours Drawer Assembly
.8 hours Cabinet Assembly
.2 hours Loading Truck
From the above examples, no particular method is right or wrong. One needs to decide which level of detail is required and what can be tracked. The key is to be able to arrive at a labor cost based on your manufacturing methods. As far as takeoff™ is concerned labor units can be added to actual material, components, parts, subassemblies, products or no where at all. The earlier labor gets added to items (i.e. at the component level) the less one needs to worry about including them at the product level. If Panel Saw is included at the component level, which is when it happens on the shop floor, then there is no need to calculate this cost at the product level because all sheet good Parts will already have cutting included.
Included is an edited section from the Tutorial Section re Library Construction…
What
differentiates one product from another?
List and organize
labor processes
Labor
Categories and Labor Items
How do I Build a Library?
Introduction
Catalog construction is fundamental to achieving optimum use from take
off. Proper customization of libraries is the primary mechanism for imparting
your specific methods and terminology on the product. Many methods exist, some
better than others, some purely philosophical but only you as the end user will
know the which balance of flexibility and constraint works best. Our goal is to
expose a few methods that make take off work better for you and then let you
decide which tools to deploy.
Where to start?
How do we organize all this?
What is a product?
What differentiates one product from another?
Why make them parametric?
Top down/Bottom up
Where to start?
Like any large task, we will begin by gathering together what we already
know and then organize this information into sections for entry into take off.
We need the following data:
who is the target audience?
labor activities with time studies
raw materials used
finishes
hardware
buyout materials
product lists with construction
details
any known product unit costs
any known conversion formulas
How do we organize all this?
Take off provides a few built in mechanisms for easy organization of a
catalog into small libraries. The most powerful tool being the outline control
which allows the following hierarchy of catalog organizing:
Project Catalog
Product
Library
Catalog
Product
Item (see Product Model)
Subassembly
Library
Catalog
Subassembly
Item
Part
Library
Catalog
Part
Item
Component
Library
Catalog
Component
Item
Labor
Library
Catalog
Labor
Item
Even though the structure is clean and simple, a little thought is still
required to ensure that items belong to the correct category and that a naming
scheme is used that most of the organization can agree to. Worksheets for
provided for this exercise.
TIP: use libraries to
contain similar categories and categories to contain similar items
What is a product?
The most difficult decision is deciding what the products are. In fact
this could almost be a philosophical question, so we will try to provide some
guidelines because anything could be a product. Once again keep in mind who is
using take off, so the concept of products should be clear to all.
Products are simply containers for mixing various combinations raw
material and labor elements. These manufactured products can then be used to
form the basis of different libraries. take offtm has no limit to
the number of libraries or items within each library.
Ideally, products should be the types of items, which are used at, take
off time. From a global enterprise point of view for traceability there should
exist a simple relationship between:
·
original takeoff
transaction
·
manufactured/buy
out item
·
shipped item
·
installed item
·
billed item
By maintaining a close one to one relationship between the above items,
products are common to everyone. Whatever you sell are your products. In fact
your raw goods may be someone products.
What differentiates one product from another?
A classic question, which needs to be addressed by all, is whether to
construct a large inflexible catalog or a smaller one with more flexible items.
One case requires wading through many products at take off time with little or
no options to respond to or otherwise quick access to an item and possibly
changing some defaults. Even though the answer to this question rests with the
catalog designer, we will list three methods for making products flexible:
Dimensions
Each product can own up to three possible types of dimensions ( Width,
Height, Depth). Then each dimension is assigned a value from a user defined
list or any override value
Materials
Each products' material composition is derived collectively from three user
defined material groups per take off item. One for construction material, one for
finish material and also for hardware.
Options
Finally, user defined set of options can be attached to every product.
These options derive theirs values from pre defined lists or can also be
overridden. Their values drive product customization at takeoff.
Using all these three methods together, one can quickly build a very
flexible product with one design. For example, given a product with:
3 dimensions and 4 choices per dimensions =
4*4*4 =64
3 material groups with 2 choices each =
2*2*2 =8
4 options with 2 choices each =
2*2*2*2 =16
Results in a product with 64*8*16=8192
instances from a single design.
Why make them parametric?
A better question would be why not. Parametrics offers the flexibility of
building items which have the ability to stretch as opposed to being of a fixed
dimension. This concept extends to not only the current item but also to any
items which it contains. Thus as the shell stretches, all of the contents can
be told to grow with the parent shell. One can quickly see that item designs
need not to be constrained to items of a fixed size. In fact they aren't even
limited to discrete intervals because a parametric model is continuous.
Top down/Bottom up
Whenever items are designed, people generally follow one of two common
approaches.
Top Down: A method by which one starts with finished
product and slowly decomposes into sub items.
Bottom Up: The opposite approach whereby one starts with
the smallest items and builds them up to the finished product.
When using takeoff with an empty library the bottom up approach is used.
Thereafter top down gets used because parts and subassemblies already exist. so
new product construction should be very quick.
Product Model
The take off product model is shown graphically below. Essential to any
costing or manufacturing model is the concept that product items ultimately
decompose to material and labor items. Thus to make anything, labor and
material cost need to be incurred. The purpose of the product design is give
the user a container to capture all the items not only for a single product but
for as many permutations as your design allows. As can be read from the
diagram, a product consists of one or more labor, component, part or
subassembly items. Parts and subassemblies can be thought of as intermediate
containers to make construction easier.
List and organize labor processes
Labor Categories and Labor Items
Before any labor items can be entered into the takeoff databases the user
has to determine what labor categories are
necessary. Labor is generally categorized by process. For example, all of the cutting processes; panel saw, table saw,
radial arm saw would fall under a Cutting
category; all of the different edging processes for thin, medium and thick
edges would fall under an Edging
category.
·
Click on the
Catalog button. The Catalog Screen appears with five tabs:
·
Product
·
Sub-Assemblies
·
Parts
·
Component
·
Labor
Click on the Labor tab and you will see the following screen
Before Labor categories can be entered, a Labor library name must be
created.
Libraries always appear on the outline as direct descendants of the
project. Right mouse click on the highlighted project name at the top of the outline
(in the example Build Libraries).
The following menu appears.
Click on Add and the following dialog box appears.
Enter the name of the Labor library and click save (in our example
"Shop Labor" has been used for the Library name.)
Notice how the folder icon for the project name (Build Libraries) is now
an open folder. The open folder means there is another folder or file inside or
at a lower level. Notice how at the moment the Labor library icon is only a
document. The document icon means there are no other folders inside. To create
a Labor category right click on the library name (Shop Labor) and the following
menu appears.
Click Add and the "Add a Category" dialog box appears.
Enter the name of the Labor category and click save. (In our example "Shop Processes")
Now you can see the "Shop Processes" category in the Labor
library. Next you will enter a Labor item in the "Shop Processes"
category.
Note - Categories
represent the components of Labor according to their process
Highlight the new category name ("Shop
Processes").
Notice that the Grid Headers are now displayed at the
top of the grid. This occurs when a category is highlighted on the outline.
Tip - When the headers are
displayed on the grid you are at the level where you can enter Labor items.
To add items, right click anywhere on the grid.
Click Add and the "Add a new Labor" dialog box is displayed.
Enter your data into the fields
Name: The
name of the Labor Component. In the
example "Cutting"
Export: The export code for this labor process if one is
required by your manufacturing software.
UOM: The
Unit of Measure for this category.
(In our example click on the arrow in
the UOM field then select Minutes)
take offtm uses the UOM to calculate how much labor is used
in a project.
Bitmap: The bitmap to represent this Labor process.
Note – See the
"Adding and Editing a UOM" section for information other than
selecting an existing UOM.
Note – See the
"Selecting or Editing a Bitmap" section for information on how to
alter the displayed bitmap.
Tip - Click Add if you
want to add another item without returning to the Labor tab or click Save when
you have finished entering data.
You will see the grid display being updated as you add items.
Tip - Note that in the
previous menu the user can also edit and delete any item on the screen. To do
this highlight the item, click the right mouse button and click edit or delete.
When a category is highlighted on the outline the corresponding material
items are displayed on the grid.