Built for advanced manufacturing and fabrication shop owners.

33 kinds of advanced manufacturing and fabrication shops. Same grounded system, tuned to precision work, certifications, and the reality of running a specialty shop.

33 kinds of advanced manufacturing & fabrication businesses

Pick yours - every one has its own numbers, leaks, and 90-day plan

How the money works

Advanced Manufacturing & Fabrication runs on 5 different business models

Two shops in the same industry can need opposite advice, because they sell different things. Find the model you actually run on.

Production and decoration runs

You sell one order of many identical units

Price per unit falls with quantity, but your cost per order does not - art, setup, screens, plates, and packing happen once no matter the count. Small custom orders quoted off a per-unit price chart lose money silently. Rush work and art revisions are where the schedule and the margin both die.

Your ceiling: Press or machine hours plus the setup time between jobs.
Biggest leak: No order minimum — Every order consumes art, setup, and packing. A minimum is not rude, it is arithmetic.

15 business types

Quoted job shop work

You sell one quoted job against a machine hour

You sell machine time and expertise, and you quote it before you know exactly what it will take. Setup time is the killer on short runs, and a shop that quotes run time without honest setup loses money on every small order. One customer at 40 percent of revenue is not a relationship, it is a risk.

Your ceiling: Machine hours, and the setup hours that never make a part.
Biggest leak: Setup buried in run time — Short runs are all setup. Quote setup as its own line and set a minimum order value.

12 business types

Long custom build

You sell one multi-week build with a deposit

You are financing someone's project with your own cash unless you structure deposits and progress payments. The build always takes longer than quoted, the customer always adds scope, and the shop space the car or the piece occupies is the real cost nobody prices. Profit comes from staged payments, written scope, and storage rules.

Your ceiling: Floor space times weeks. A stalled build occupies a spot that could have turned three times.
Biggest leak: The forever build — Every shop has one. It is not a customer, it is a mortgage on your best bay. Set a decision deadline, then invoice storage.

4 business types

Owned asset utilization

You sell one night, one rental, one unit occupied

You own an expensive asset and get paid for the hours or nights it is in use. Occupancy times rate is revenue, but maintenance and turnover cost is what decides profit. Empty time is unrecoverable and pricing is the strongest lever you have - static pricing on a variable-demand asset is money left on the table every week.

Your ceiling: Occupancy of the asset, and how fast you can turn it between uses.
Biggest leak: Flat pricing all year — Demand is not flat. Dynamic or at least seasonal pricing is the fastest revenue increase available to you.

1 business type

Heat Treating

Dispatched service call

You sell one truck rolling to one address

Revenue is calls times average ticket, and both are capped by how many trucks you can keep loaded. Margin lives in the second half of the visit: the diagnosis is cheap, the repair and the replacement are where the money is. A truck that runs six calls at a low ticket loses to a truck that runs four at a high one, because the drive time is the same either way.

Your ceiling: Truck-days. Every truck has about 8 productive hours and you cannot borrow tomorrow's.
Biggest leak: Free diagnostics — You are paying a tech and a truck to teach a customer what is wrong so they can shop it. Charge for the trip; waive it into the repair if you want, but charge it.

1 business type

Industrial Equipment Repair