Fab shops have the most chaotic schedules in manufacturing
A fabrication job might touch six different machines. Raw material gets cut on the saw. Flat stock goes to the brake for bending. Parts get tacked, then welded. Welds get ground smooth. Everything goes to the paint booth. Then inspection and shipping.
Each step uses a different machine. Each machine has a queue. Each queue has conflicts with every other job moving through the shop. One bottleneck at the welding station backs up everything behind it.
That’s the scheduling problem in metal fabrication. It’s not “put a job on a machine.” It’s “route 15 jobs through 8 machines in the right order without anything crashing into anything else.”
What makes fab shop scheduling different
Diverse machine types. A CNC shop might have 5 mills and 3 lathes. A fab shop has a plasma cutter, a shear, two brakes, a welding bay, a grinder, a paint booth, and a crane. Each machine is different. The schedule has to handle all of them.
Long operation chains. A typical fab job has 4 to 8 steps. Cut, form, weld, grind, finish, inspect. Each step depends on the previous one finishing. If the saw falls behind, every downstream operation shifts.
Shared bottleneck machines. The welding station is usually the bottleneck. Every job passes through it. If three jobs need welding on Tuesday, two of them are waiting. Your schedule needs to show that conflict before Tuesday arrives.
Variable job sizes. One job is a single bracket that takes 20 minutes. The next is a structural frame that takes three days. Both go through the same machines. Scheduling has to handle both without one blocking the other.
Material variety. Steel, aluminum, stainless, galvanized. Different gauges, different lengths. You need to know what’s on the rack before you schedule a job.
How Machestra works for fab shops
Every machine on one board. Saw, brake, welder, grinder, paint booth. All on the scheduling board. You see what’s running where and when each machine opens up.
Per-operation scheduling. Break the job into steps: cut on the plasma, bend on the brake, weld at station 2, grind, paint. Each step gets its own machine, operator, and time slot. You always know where a job is in the process.
Conflict detection. Three jobs need the welding station on the same day? Machestra shows you the overlap before it becomes a problem on the floor. No more double-bookings.
Material tracking. Track your sheet stock, bar stock, and tube by type, gauge, and quantity. Get low-stock alerts before you schedule a job you can’t finish.
Mobile access. Your welder checks the schedule from a phone at the station. Your office staff checks from the desk. You check from home. Same data, everywhere.
What you don’t need
You don’t need CAD integration. You don’t need EN 1090-2 compliance tracking. You don’t need a quoting module or an accounting system bolted onto your scheduling tool.
If you do need those things, Eziil is built for that. It costs 7x more, but it covers the compliance angle.
If you need scheduling and nothing else, Machestra stays out of your way. Four things: machines, people, materials, schedules.
Other shops look at MRP systems like MRPeasy, but at $49/user/month the cost adds up fast when you want your whole fab crew on the schedule.
Pricing
No per-user fees. Your welders, fitters, office staff, and shop foreman all see the schedule.
- Free: 3 machines, 5 users. No credit card.
- Starter ($12/mo):* 10 machines, 50 users.
- Growth ($39/mo):* 100 machines, 100 users.
A 6-person fab shop with 8 machines pays $12/month* total. Not per user. Total.
Getting started
- Sign up free
- Import your machines and jobs from your spreadsheet
- Start scheduling across your whole shop
Under 10 minutes from signup to your first scheduled job.
*All Machestra prices shown in USD. Actual price may vary based on your location.