Fabrication Scheduling Software for Sheet Metal, Structural and Weldment Shops

Fabrication routings are long and every step is a different kind of constraint:

• Cut, form, weld, finish, assemble. A typical part goes laser or plasma, then press brake, then weld, then paint or powder coat, then assembly. Each step has its own machines, people and setups, and a delay anywhere pushes everything behind it.
• Nests tie jobs together. One sheet often carries parts for several jobs. If that nest runs late, every job on it is late at the brake, so the nest has to be scheduled as one run, not as separate jobs.
• Welders are certified, not interchangeable. Only some people can run a given weld. A weld bay with no qualified welder on shift is not capacity, which is why Skody's Plant & Enterprise plan schedules welders by skill.
• Finishing batches and outside processing. Paint and powder coat run best grouped by color. Galvanizing, plating or heat treat leave the building and come back days later.
• Weldments wait on every component. An assembly can't start until the last bracket arrives from the brake.

When the schedule only knows due dates and machine hours, the brake starves while weld is buried, and the planner spends the day moving jobs by hand.

1. Connect. Skody reads jobs, routings and due dates from your ERP. Live integrations: ProShop, Fulcrum and JobBOSS². Acumatica and SYSPRO integrations are also listed on skody.ai.
2. Model each station. Lasers and plasma tables, press brakes, weld bays, paint lines and assembly benches are work centers with real capacity and shifts.
3. Add people when they are the constraint (Plant & Enterprise plan). Operator skills decide who can run which step, so a certified weld is only scheduled when a certified welder is available.
4. Schedule nests as one run and group setups. A laser nest that carries parts from several jobs is scheduled as a single run, and each job's next step follows from it. Skody groups laser setups by material and thickness and paint work by color, while still protecting due dates.
5. Include outside processing. Outside processing is part of the finite model, so downstream steps aren't scheduled before parts are back.
6. Recompute when the floor changes. A late nest, a brake down or a hot job: Skody recomputes the whole shop with the same logic, and the dashboards (Gantt, bottleneck map, late-job visibility, capacity forecast) show where the new bottleneck is.

• Nesting. Skody does not create nests or optimize sheet use. Your nesting software and ERP decide which parts go on which sheet; Skody then schedules that nest as one run and sequences each job's downstream steps from it.
• Quoting and estimating. Those stay in your ERP. Skody's capable to promise (CTP) check runs a prospective job, even one not yet in the ERP, against the current load so you can commit to a date you can hit.
• Replacing your ERP. Orders, routings, inventory and costing stay where they are.

Vendor capabilities change. Verify critical requirements with each vendor on your own routings.

• Your ERP's scheduler already holds. If the plan you publish in the morning still matches the floor in the afternoon, you don't need another system.
• You want to own the software. EDGEBIC is a one-time license for an installed Windows application, and User Solutions publishes fab-specific modeling such as welder certification matrices.
• You run many plants and want an enterprise APS. PlanetTogether supports multi-user and multi-site operations and integrates with ERPs such as SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle, NetSuite, Infor, Epicor and QAD. It does not publish pricing.
• You can't wait for a new ERP connection. Skody connects to any ERP, but one we haven't connected yet typically takes about 3 weeks after you sign. If you need to start sooner, an import-based scheduler may be the practical choice.
• You need nesting optimization. That's a job for nesting software, not a scheduler.

• Shop plan: starts at $1,500 per month, month-to-month. Includes machine capacity scheduling, finite-capacity scheduling, automatic conflict resolution, due-date-first optimization, ERP integration, delivery-risk and late-job visibility, planner overrides and what-if scenarios, and production dashboards.
• Plant & Enterprise plan: custom pricing based on scope. Adds workforce capacity scheduling, skills and personnel availability constraints, machine and workforce optimization, pallet pool and multi-part scheduling, lights-out production planning, MES and machine telemetry integration, multi-department and multi-site deployment, and advanced integrations.
• Pricing is per shop, not per user. There is no free trial; Shop plans are month-to-month instead.
• Every deployment is hosted in ITAR-ready Gov Cloud. SOC 2 Type II.

See pricing.