Stock and production
The stock behind a designed product, and the machines that make it
Give a design module the stock you actually hold, connect the line that needs preparing to the machine that prepares it, and a committed order raises the cut, erode and machining work already queued. Nothing is retyped between the sale and the shop floor.
The flow
From a designed product to a queued machine order
Five steps, and only the second one asks you to decide anything.
- 1. Make the stock row counted
- A design module prices from rates and rules by default and needs nothing here. An organisation that manufactures the full line opens the module's settings and gives a stock row a held quantity and a low stock threshold, then marks it prepped or as requiring preparation. There is no separate switch to find: the data is the mode.
- 2. Connect the line to a machine
- A line that requires preparation can be connected to a machine module. Only a module this design category's take-off can actually feed is offered, and only one this workspace has switched on, so a connection can never promise work that nothing would raise.
- 3. Sell it
- The order is committed from an accepted quote, including one the customer accepted on the public portal with no login, from a purchase order the Sales Engineer read, from an order raised by hand, or from a Kabaido Commerce website. Every route reaches the same order machinery.
- 4. The work is raised
- The take-off has already counted the manufacturing for the design in front of it. Each declared job goes to the module that makes it: a sheet profile to Arcline, tip and knife blanks to wire EDM, a machined body to CNC milling. Parts are created, or refreshed to the geometry just computed so a second order never cuts a superseded shape, and the orders land already queued with the platform order named on them.
- 5. The shop works it
- Arcline nests onto real sheets and banked remnants, consumes the sheet on completion and books the usable offcut back in. The two shop modules queue a run with a modelled time and book the discs or billets out when it completes, writing a shortfall down rather than swallowing it.
The setting
Rates and rules, or the stock you actually hold
Most workspaces never open this. It is for the organisation that does not just design the product but makes it, and it is set per stock line rather than per module, so the two can be mixed.
The default
Rates and rules
The module prices from the rates, formulas and rules you loaded. Stock rows are a price reference and a lead time, and nothing is counted.
Per line
Counted stock
A row gains a held quantity and a low stock threshold. The figure is yours to maintain, it warns you when it drops, and it tells the module what you have got.
State one
Prepped, ready to use
The blank comes in finished and goes straight onto the product. Nothing has to be made first, so there is no machine to connect.
State two
Requires preparation
The blank has to be cut, eroded or machined before it can be used. This is the state that can be connected to a machine module, and the reason the connection exists.
The panel is in the design module's own settings, beside the rates and the stock rows it already reads. A workspace still on the shipped example stock is told to save its own figures first: connecting an example row to a machine would queue work for a part nobody sells.
What connects to what
Two design categories raise machine work today
A category may only offer a connection its own take-off can fill, so this table is the whole of it. It is generated from the same registry the platform reads, not written out here.
| Design category | Arcline | Wire EDM | CNC Milling |
|---|---|---|---|
| PCD saw blades | The blade body blank, with its thickness, cut length and pierce count | The PCD tip blanks, with their wire path, diamond layer and blank size | Not included |
| PCD profile cutters | Not included | The PCD knife blanks, with the form edge included in the wire path | The machined cutter body, with its ISO group, removed volume and billet |
Soft jaws, gaskets, plastics cut to size and balustrades and handrails price from your rates, your rules and the stock you hold, and declare no manufacturing job for a machine module to pick up, so they offer no connection at all. Offering one would be promising work that nothing would ever raise, which is exactly the defect this rule was written to fix.
The price
What the machine's own chart does to the price
Connect a stock line to Arcline and you name the material, the thickness and the machine's hourly rate. The platform reads the cut chart row your own shop maintains, takes the feed it publishes, and works out the cost per millimetre of cut. It writes that into the design module's body cutting rate and shows you the working before anything prices from it.
Arcline cut chart: Mild steel at 3mm feeds 4200mm/min; at £65.00/h that is £0.0003/mm of cut.
Only a coefficient the module's formulas already declare can move, so an override can never invent a price input that was not there. The merge happens once, when the module is loaded, which is why the live preview, the server recompute and the exports all price from the same figure with no extra work.
A wire EDM or a CNC milling connection raises the work and leaves the price alone. Neither writes a rate today, and this page will say so until one does.
Nor does a finished run. Completing a run records the minutes the clock measured beside the modelled figure, so a shop can find out where its own machine disagrees with its chart and correct the chart. No measured minute is written back into a price by anything.
Three counts
What is counted, and where the count moves
There are three stock figures in this story and they belong to different people. Merging them would make one of them a lie.
| Stock | What it holds | When the count moves |
|---|---|---|
| Design stock, in the design module | What you hold of a blank, a disc or a sheet, with the price the module quotes against and a threshold that warns you when it runs low. | When you change it. Nothing decrements it when an order is placed and nothing is reserved against it: it is a reference count you maintain. |
| Sheet stock, in Arcline | Real sheets and the remnants banked off earlier cuts, each remnant kept with its true outline rather than a bounding box. | On completing a cut. The sheet is consumed and an offcut measuring 150mm or more in both directions is banked back in, ready for the next nest. |
| Disc, blank and billet stock, in the shop modules | PCD discs and carbide blanks in wire EDM, round billets and blocks in CNC milling, each with the real dimensions its kind carries. | On completing a run. The stock the run named is booked out, a shortfall is written into the shop's activity rather than clamped away, and crossing a threshold raises a low stock line. |
Three counts, three owners. The design module's figure is what the seller maintains and prices against; the machine's figure is what the operator will find on the shelf. Automatic depletion at order time is a real thing to build, and it will land on the machine side where the stock physically moves.
Questions
About stock and production
- Two today. The PCD saw blade module can feed Arcline and wire EDM; the PCD profile cutter module can feed wire EDM and CNC milling. A module only offers a connection its own take-off declares a job for, which is why the other four offer none, and why nothing else on the site claims they do.
- No, and this page will not pretend otherwise. A counted design stock line is a reference figure you maintain: it shows what you hold, warns you below a threshold and tells the pricing what is on the shelf. The count that moves on its own is at the machine. Completing a run books the discs, billets or sheets out, and a run that used more than was held records the shortfall instead of hiding it.
- An accepted quote, including one the customer accepted on the public portal with no login, a purchase order the Sales Engineer read, an order raised by hand, or an order placed on a Kabaido Commerce website. All four go through the same order machinery, and the machinist work is raised from all four.
- No. A completed run records the minutes the clock measured next to the modelled figure, so a shop can see where its own machine disagrees with its chart and correct the chart. Nothing writes a measured minute into a price. The one machine figure that does travel is the Arcline cutting rate, computed when the connection is made from your cut chart and your hourly rate, with the working shown first.
- Then leave all of this alone. Rates and rules is the default and needs nothing set: the module prices from the figures you loaded and quotes exactly as it did before. Stock mode is for the organisation that manufactures the full line, and even then it is set line by line.
Sell it once, make it without retyping it
Start free, design a product, connect the stock line that needs preparing and watch the machine order raise itself.