R&D shop Management

[toododd]

I am looking for a for shop management model for an R&D shop.
I want to start a small shop that will handle short run jobs from outside contractors. This shop will be required to build and assemble very low (1-2 units) production units. The shop will need to be very flexible and at times a majority of the shop equipment will be idle... equipment includes NC machining centers, sheet metal areas,standard tool room equipment, precision lapping equipment, and CMM inspection equipment.

I would like to be able to give accurate estimates to complete work on time and in budget... from experience this seems to be the hardest part. Also since the shop does not perform long production runs costs can run a little high so I am trying to find a way to keep this from happening.
Books are articles would be very helpful on the subject..if anyone can make a suggestion.

 

[ICman]

It's always a problem estimating piece work like this. If you can "modularize" or standardize on some components, then you can better estimate at least that part of the work.

Another way to improve estimates is to find out what other shops are charging for the same or similar work. The hard part is getting a potential competitor to give you a price. However, if you talk to other shop owners, you might be able to share the work on a large project. Then, you could share estimating philosophies.

Are these projects highly technical? If so, do you have engineering resources available? Depending on the product, engineering costs may be high, and you should go to the engineer(s) with each bid to get their estimate.

If the materials are exotic, then create a list of suppliers and prices before you attack that quote. It would be good if you had an idea of the machineability of different materials, too.

Unfortunately, I can't think of any books at present. Look thru the small business books at the library or bookstore, and see if you can find something that might apply to your work.

Good luck!

. . . Steve

 

[jrhols]

I have been poking around for someone to try out a new method of process control that is more process management or design auditing. It combines costs analysis - on the simple assumption that parts over the Upper Tolerance Limit are scrap and those under the Lower tolerance limit can be reworked. You have to know the cost to rework a part, the lot size you want to estimate, the mean, nominal, standard deviation and UTL and LTL. Those are the only inputs.
It also reports metrics like CPK's and graphs of the specification so in the design approval process you can
taylor the specification properly to the part features, a problem that has been the biggest detracting fault of all acceptance sampling plans, first part approval, SPC and six sigma, and even GDT (Geometric tolerancing) philosphys.
Of course I wounld not charge but the program is crude,
not something I would want to charge you for right now,
but if people like it the ideas in it could revolutionize the way things are done. Mostly I feel industry does thing the way they do now because of history and because, well, that's just the way they are done. This is new and with someone who can even guess at costs and can guess at how the process behaves, it should be a good starting point for your shop process/cost control project. Send in your reply your email address. It's short enough (less than 1 megabyte ) to email.