Internal time allowance and material used

[Neville Bastian]

I was looking through Ecabinets made easy and the help manual about using excel to access data for cutting lists etc. At the moment we extract data from the planit program that gives us time allowed on a job, the break down on what the time was allocated for. We also get a material allocated list. We then use this data to compare actual times imputed from computers scattered around the workshop. We also use these computers for goods received and this gives us the status of our orders. We also order goods based on Planits data plus additional non planit supplies.
Sorry to ramble but is there more detailed information than ecabs made easy that tells you what files have what information. Am I able to extract times and materials in detail?
If you could point me in the right direction. I'm sure ecabinets would have what I need for costing purposes.

Regards

Neville

[Kerry Fullington]

Neville,

This is something that I have wanted to see in eCabinets for a long time. There needs to be some changes in the way labor is calculated within the software. I have been using a spread sheet to do this but causes a lot of extra work to take the information from ecabinets and enter it into the spread sheet to calculate labor.

We need a way to assign labor to materials in eCabinets. We can calculate over the course of several jobs what time it takes to perform every task involved in building cabinets. We need a way to input those times and associate them to materials in eCabinets. For instance in sheet goods we would assign times for offloading, stocking, cutting, machining, sanding, assembling finishing, delivering and installing. This would be broken down to a time per sheet or square foot of material used. Then when we draw a job in eCabinets the more sheets we use the more labor assigned. This would be true for every material, component and outsourced part used in our cabinets. You assign labor to a lazy Susan and the more Susan's on a job= more labor. Assign the labor it takes to build, sand bore, finish, install hinges, hang and adjust doors and the more doors on a job= the correct amount of labor. From this we can get very accurate estimates for our bids.

You can then do as you are doing and track time in the shop to keep this up to date and accurate. I use time tracking software in the shop to break down my labor into different tasks. From this I get the information for my spread sheet.

Being able to use eCabinets to assign labor and get accurate job cost information is almost as important as getting an accurate cut list. That is what cabinet design software is for.

Thanks for bringing this up Neville.

Kerry

[Neville Bastian]

Hi Kerry,
Thanks for the reply.
I think you are on the right track with time allocation. The way we have handled it is to break work into work centres. For example a kitchen if say a paint mdf door style will have the same work centres for repeated kitchen that type whereas maybe a bought in timber door kitchen will be missing one work centre. For example our painted kitchens have these work centres. Cut and edge machining, assembling, route and machine doors, sanding and painting doors, bench top manufacturing, delivery and install and housekeeping. Housekeeping (is my weak link) and not to forget repairs and maintence past work (redo). Every cabinet if called a library name can have minutes allocated. For cutting and edging could be based on square meters of material and edging on metres of edging required, Route doors would be based on door pattern complexity in minutes,sanding doors and painting would be based on sanding minutes per door pattern and minutes to paint based on paint style (clear,pigmented satin or gloss). Each different cabinet type will have different minutes. You could if you wanted to have a pantry have a different time to a wardrobe built in?

The ideal thing would to allow flexabilty on how each of us want the cabinet time distributed into. I might want 5 job centres whereas Kerry you might want 7?
The whole idea is to get these estimated time breakdowns then compare to our actual. The actual history will allow us to adjust our estimated times or highlight problem areas so they can be addressed.

There is talk on sharing furniture designs on this forum. How powerful would it be if we could share construction time history? This would be difficult to do granted but if I had a history of taking 10 minutes to sand a square profile routed door but 10% of Ecabinet users were doing it in 5 minutes with the same quality I would be asking why? The answer could be a diamond bit or special sanding paper or special sanding block etc. I then could take that production idea on board if I wanted to save 2.5 hrs per kitchen.

I guess I'm digressing a bit but if Ecabinets could have a export to csv option on all their current reports for now that would be great. Maybe if enough others join Kerry and myself in refining Ecabinets in more detailed time allocation requests the programmers might move it up the wish list.
The bottom line is if we make a buck we will spend it on better equipment which means Thermwood cnc upgrades.

Regards

Neville

[Mike Brannon]

I would like to see some progress on this. It's true that I rely on things like labor/square foot and the ratio of labor cost to material cost to check my pricing. But I don't think they cut it for figuring basic labor cost. Even if material cost didn't vary from job to job because I always used the same material, I still would need labor costs that were independent of material cost so I could decide whether to make or buy components.

Is there a way to incorporate design charges for 5 piece doors that resemble the pricing structure of e-cabinet vendors who make them? It would a big step forward if the program could accurately reflect the impact on the bottom line of the proposal of substituting purchased doors for doors made in house.

Thanks
MB

[Mike Brannon]

I would like to see some progress on this. It's true that I rely on things like labor/square foot and the ratio of labor cost to material cost to check my pricing. But I don't think they cut it for figuring basic labor cost. Even if material cost didn't vary from job to job because I always used the same material, I still would need labor costs that were independent of material cost so I could decide whether to make or buy components.

Is there a way to incorporate design charges for 5 piece doors that resemble the pricing structure of e-cabinet vendors who make them? It would a big step forward if the program could accurately reflect the impact on the bottom line of the proposal of substituting purchased doors for doors made in house.

Thanks
MB

[DanEpps]

...Is there a way to incorporate design charges for 5 piece doors that resemble the pricing structure of e-cabinet vendors who make them? It would a big step forward if the program could accurately reflect the impact on the bottom line of the proposal of substituting purchased doors for doors made in house...

Yep. In Settings and Preferences -> Define Costs, look at the bottom left of the panel. Here you can enter a cost per door plus a cost per square foot for alternate source doors. These costs apply only to alternate source doors and not those purchased through the software or constructed in-house.

[Mike Brannon]

Is there a way to adjust the labor settings so that I can apply a design charge and a material charge/square foot to in-house doors that would allow me to show the impact of the make/buy decision to the customer?
Suppose I want to create a door style with 3 1/2\" stiles and rails that will display as designed in the kitchen, and then show the customer what the vendor supplied doors with 2 1/4\" stiles and rails looks like, and be able to show how these options affect the price?

Isn't this a good first step for the programming crew to accomplish as a way to get to a better over-all labor costing scheme?

MB

[DanEpps]

As of now there is no easy way to add labor costs to in-house doors.

You could enter the cost in one of the miscellaneous cost categories and set it when you assign labor to a cabinet. That could be error prone though.

I think everyone agrees that costing in eCabinets could use some improvements.