Routing & Standard-Time Library
Turn scattered routing notes and spreadsheets into one trusted, validated library of routings - the ordered operations, work centers, setup minutes, and run-time per piece each product follows - so estimating, scheduling, and costing all pull from the same approved source.
A private internal tool where you import or enter routings, get every operation sequence and time checked, have an engineer approve each routing (and each edit), keep a full revision history, and look up or export the active routings other tools can trust.
Before you start
- A CSV or Google Sheet of your routing notes (item, operation sequence, work center, setup minutes, run minutes per unit, description)
- A short list of your valid work centers
- Free accounts on Vercel, Supabase, and Resend
- No coding experience required
The problem this kills
A routing is the recipe for how you make a part: the ordered list of operations, each with a work center, a setup time, a run time per piece, and instructions. Estimating uses it to quote. Scheduling uses it to load machines. Costing uses it to price labor. But in most shops the "routing" lives in three different places at once - an old spreadsheet, a tribal-knowledge note taped to a machine, and whatever the last estimator typed from memory.
When those copies drift, everything downstream drifts with them. A quote uses 12 minutes of setup, the shop floor actually takes 40, and the job loses money. Two operations get the same number, so the sequence is ambiguous. A run time is left blank or entered as zero, and the schedule says a 500-piece job takes no time at all. A work center is referenced that was retired last year. Nobody knows which copy is current, so nobody trusts any of them.
This tool makes one trusted library. Every routing is validated, an engineer approves it (and every later edit) before it goes active, and a full revision history means you can always see what changed, who changed it, and when. Estimating, scheduling, and costing finally pull from the same source.
What you'll build
A private web app, just for your team, that:
- Lets you import routing rows from a spreadsheet (or paste a Google Sheet link) and map your own column names - or enter a routing operation by operation on screen.
- Validates every routing: operation numbers are ordered and unique, setup and run times are non-negative numbers, and every work center actually exists in your work-center list.
- Flags each problem with a plain-English reason next to the routing it belongs to.
- Makes an engineer review and explicitly approve each routing - and each later edit - before it is marked active and usable by other tools.
- Keeps a revision history: every approved change becomes a new revision you can compare against the last.
- Gives you a clean lookup screen (find any active routing by item) and an export to a routing CSV in exactly the columns your system expects.
What's inside the Implementation Plan
The plan is a single file you paste into an AI coding agent (Claude Code). It walks the agent through building the whole tool, step by step, with a ready-to-copy prompt at the end of each step.
It opens by interviewing you about your business - how routings are built and used today, the estimating/scheduling/ERP systems they feed, the exact field names and item/work-center/SKU conventions in your data, your typical and peak routing sizes, your approval rules, and your messy edge cases (alternate operations, outside processing, sub-second run times, rev letters). It reflects a short tailored spec back to you and waits for your thumbs-up. The data model, the validations, the dedupe key, and the export columns are all shaped by your answers - this is not a generic template you have to bend to fit.
You also get: the operation-sequence and standard-time validation engine, the human approval gate, the revision history, the lookup screen, the audit trail, and the CSV-export fallback so the tool works today even with no integration to your system of record.
The governance it includes (this is the point)
- Login so only your team can open the tool.
- Row-level security so each organization only ever sees its own routings and work centers.
- A complete audit trail - who imported, who edited, who approved each routing and each revision, and when.
- A hard human-in-the-loop approval gate - the tool drafts and validates the routing, but nothing is marked active or made available to other tools until an engineer reviews it and explicitly approves.
- Duplicate guards - the same item + routing revision + operation number can't slip through twice, and the same import file can't be processed twice.
Who it's for
Process engineers, industrial engineers, and production planners who own routings and standard times and are tired of estimating, scheduling, and costing each running off a different, stale copy. If you can fill in a spreadsheet, you can build this.
You've got this - paste the first prompt and let the agent interview you.