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Fabrication labor and machine time estimating · Lesson 1 of 4

Fabrication labor and machine time estimating: principles and terminology

What an estimate of fabrication time is and where it sits after the takeoff; GAO's three estimating methods; touch and support labor; setup versus run; how AFS counts work as bends, hems and pieces; and the machine-guarding boundary.

You will be able to: Tell people hours, machine hours and elapsed days apart, name the three estimating methods and what engineering build-up adds, separate setup from run work, and state the safety boundary an estimate must respect.

10 min · 9 slides · 7 questions

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Slide 1 of 9

Three clocks: people, machine and calendar

People hours count how long people work on a job, machine hours count how long a machine runs, and elapsed days count the calendar from start to finish.

These are this course's working definitions. A job waiting its turn adds elapsed days but no people hours and no machine hours.

People hours, machine hours and elapsed days for one jobThree horizontal timelines for the same job. People hours show two working blocks, machine hours show two shorter blocks inside them, and elapsed days stretch across the whole span including an amber waiting gap with no work.One job, three clocksPeople hourswaitMachine hourswaitElapsed dayswaitWaiting adds elapsed days onlySchematic, not to scalePale: idle, no work counted

Three horizontal timelines for the same job. People hours show two working blocks, machine hours show two shorter blocks inside them, and elapsed days stretch across the whole span including an amber waiting gap with no work. Pale stretches of the first two timelines are time with no work counted.

A job waiting its turn adds elapsed days but no people hours or machine hours. Schematic, not to scale and not a measurement.

Sources

Glossary

Engineering build-up
GAO's name for an estimate built at the lowest level of detail, one piece at a time, as labor and materials with overhead and fee added; also called grass-roots or bottom-up.
Analogy
GAO: an estimating method that uses the cost of a similar program and adjusts for differences.
Parametric estimate
GAO: an estimating method that relates cost to one or more parameters through a statistical relationship.
Touch labor
Hands-on labor hours. In GAO's Table 10 example a support labor factor is applied on top of touch hours to get total labor hours.
Setup
Preparing a machine for a batch: BLS describes setters preparing machines before production, doing test runs, often making and inspecting the first batch, then handing over to an operator.
Run work
This course's term for the work that repeats on every piece once setup is done, such as loading, bending and checking, as BLS describes for operators who monitor production.