BLOG · DESIGN · 2026-07-19 · 4 MIN READ
Billing the hours your designers already work
In most shops, design time is a favor: quoted loosely, tracked nowhere, absorbed silently. Treat it like machine time and the margin comes back.
DESIGN IS AN OPERATION, NOT OVERHEAD
Put engineering on the routing as op 05 with a standard, and it behaves like any other operation: it gets scheduled, it gets clocked, and its cost lands on the job. The one-off bracket that 'only took a couple hours of CAD' stops eating the margin invisibly.
CAD-TO-QUOTE CLOSES THE LOOP
When the STEP file drives the quote, the design intent and the estimate are the same artifact. Feature changes re-price in minutes, and the customer sees a number backed by a routing instead of a shrug.
REV CONTROL THE FLOOR CAN'T IGNORE
Rev C doesn't go out by email hoping someone reads it. Releasing a revision flags every open traveler for acknowledgment; the operator confirms on the shop-floor screen before the next setup. Wrong-rev scrap drops toward zero.
WHAT THE NUMBERS LOOK LIKE
Shops that route design work typically find 4–8% of job cost was unbilled engineering. That's not a price increase — it's revenue that was always earned and never captured.
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