We are a 10 CNC machine shop with 3 Expensive Mazaks and have 4 great machinists and our sales per machinist is actually pretty good, annual sales are about 1.3 mil. BUT we are experiencing profit losses every month. I think it is because of needing more machinists and high indirect costs. Here is an example of our indirect employees: 1. Lead & Setup guy 2. Programmer who also does setup and quoting 3. R&D machinist 4. Material handler expediter 5. Manufacturing Planning assistant (cuts about 2 work orders per day and schedules jobs), 6. QA manager 7. QA inspector 8. Manu. Manager 9. Master Planner Scheduler 10. purchasing agent. Some of the indirect employees spend 20% of their time on other non-machine shop projects.
We’ve left the running the shop in the hands of our manufacturing manager (amazing engineer and manufacturing mind), but are really questioning the need for 10 admin people for 4 machinists. I am just trying to get feedback on how many people are needed to do the various indirect jobs for a shop our size? Quoter? Programming? Planning and work order management? Any insight you can share is appreciated! Note that purch, QA, Manager, planner will spend 20% of their time in other departments.
We’ve left the running the shop in the hands of our manufacturing manager (amazing engineer and manufacturing mind), but are really questioning the need for 10 admin people for 4 machinists. I am just trying to get feedback on how many people are needed to do the various indirect jobs for a shop our size? Quoter? Programming? Planning and work order management? Any insight you can share is appreciated! Note that purch, QA, Manager, planner will spend 20% of their time in other departments.