Should employees know quote times?

In a job shop, non production, making tooling, 3 to 10 part typical runs, should employees be told how many hours are quoted for the job? I can think of pros and cons, but wondering how other shops handle this. I would be interested in feedback from owners as well as employees. We don't do it, but some key employees disagree on if it would be a good practice. RJT

Depends, either way really doesn't change things a whole lot. If employees are working to their best. Knowing that a job that is quoted for 2 hours really takes 4 really won't magically make them do it in 2 and rarely motivates to go any faster knowing it'll be under time no matter what. Now if you quote 4, and the employee can do it in 2, he may feel like he can stretch it out a little.

Depends also on how much they care for the well being of the company. I probably wouldn't disclose it, unless they ask how they did on time for a certain job to gage how they're doing. We all get times when we think " was it really supposed to take this long??"

Unless there's a bonus structure in place for beating the alloted time, disclosing the time won't gain you anything in most instances. It won't turn an underquoted job into a winner, but it can definitely turn drilling and tapping a 1/4-20 hole into a 2 hour job for some employees if they happen to know that's all it takes to "make the book" on this one.

I let my employee quote the jobs, so if he can't do it in the allotted time, then I'm on his case Hey, that's true!

But not every employee could or would welcome that additional pressure all the time, but over time, they're going to manufacture some kind of time estimate in their own mind anyway, either that, or they may guess how much the job is going out the door for. They could be wildly inaccurate in their guess and possibly create their own dissatisfaction with their perceived share of the profits.

The manager needs to monitor new employees, to see where they differ from average output on standard tasks. Then, some personal training can take place to address any apparent need.

I think it is good to poll the employee who will be doing the job for how long he thinks it will take before sending out the quote. If the time seems ridiculous, then have a conversation about why that is, and how he was planning on doing it, and what tools may be required.

I worked in a shop where each work order had the quoted hours at the top. Each employee was rated for efficiency as a percentage of actual hours vs the quote.
All this accomplished was frustration when the job was poorly quoted, and "cherry picking" of the obviously over bid jobs by the less scrupulous employees. If a job was under bid, there was much whining, if over bid, there was frequently sand bagging to burn up the hours. Jobs that were under bid would get hours charged to the over bid jobs. etc, etc...
Got to where there was no good data available to draw conclusions from, as it was all so doctored up to make the pie charts look good at the next P&L beating.

None of my employers told the bid time. I just worked it like I would if it were my shop. If I were long some told me, most did not. One jerk I worked for always complained. I really didn't care because I was going at my best pace, not the fastest, unless told it's a rush job. If told it's a rush job everytime I soon just worked at my normal pace. It didn't take me long to read the boss and learn how he manipulated us. My last employer didn't tell the bid time nor did he complain, to me anyway, he did ask others what's the hold up.