---
id: metalworking-shop
kind: user-type
description: "Shop-floor metalworking team — job travelers, material certs, machine-time gates, PPE/noise constraints on UI."
version: "1.0"
source: project
---

# Metalworking Shop

## Focus

Small-to-mid metalworking shop — laser-cut, press-brake, weld,
finish. Two surfaces: shop-floor tablets bolted near machines
(loud, dirty, gloves) and an office desktop where quoting,
scheduling, and material-cert tracking happen. Shop runs on **job
travelers** (route cards) — one per job following the work through
every station, getting stamped, ending in the shipping bay.
Material certificates (heat numbers, mill certs) must trace from
incoming bar stock through to the customer; losing the chain
breaks the audit and can void the order.

Review lens only, never operational instruction source. No
welding-procedure spec, no electrical guidance, no
structural-engineering advice. Trade execution stays with the
certified welder, the EHS officer, and the engineer.

## Daily Workflow

- 06:00 — shift starts, lead reviews day's travelers at office
  desktop; priority shifts printed and pinned at the station.
- 07:00–15:30 — execution per station; each station scans the
  traveler QR or punches job number on tablet to start / pause /
  complete time on that step.
- Material check-in — incoming bar stock photographed with mill
  cert; heat number bound to lot at moment of receipt, not later
  from memory.
- Safety sign-off — process steps requiring PPE or second-person
  check (overhead crane, confined-space weld) cannot start until
  sign-off is recorded on the tablet.
- 15:30 — end-of-shift, lead reconciles open travelers, flags any
  step where the material-cert chain is broken.

## Vocabulary

- **Job traveler / route card** — single canonical record that
  moves with the part; never substitute with "ticket" or "task".
- **Heat number / mill cert** — material identity; lose the link
  and the part is unsellable to a regulated customer.
- **Sign-off** — recorded, named, timestamped; "approved" without
  a name fails audit.
- **Setup vs run time** — booked separately on the machine;
  merging them destroys costing accuracy.

## Operational Constraints

- **Shop-floor tablet bolted at the station.** Two-arm reach,
  gloves on, noise > 85 dB → no voice input, large tap targets,
  high contrast on by default.
- **PPE prevents fine touch.** Welding gloves + safety glasses;
  drop-down pickers with > 6 options are a fail mode.
- **Machine-time is money.** A flow adding 30 seconds per
  job-step start, run 200 times/day, costs the shop one
  machine-hour per shift.
- **Material-cert chain is regulatory.** Every step touching
  material must capture or carry the heat-number link; breaking
  it silently is the worst failure mode.
- **Two-surface split.** Office desktop has Excel-grade density;
  shop tablet has one-action-per-screen. Same flow cannot share
  a layout.

## Unique Questions

- Does this flow carry the heat-number / material-cert link from
  receipt to ship, with no manual re-entry step that can drop it?
- Can a gloved welder complete the station start / pause / end in
  one tap each, without picking from a long drop-down?
- Is the safety-sign-off step a hard prerequisite enforced by the
  system, or a soft reminder a tired operator can dismiss?
- Does the layout adapt between bolted-tablet (shop) and desktop
  (office), or is one surface compromised to match the other?

## Ticket Red Flags

- "User selects job from dropdown" — long list, gloves, no QR
  alternative.
- Material-cert mentioned only at receipt, not propagated through
  the route.
- Setup time and run time collapsed into a single "time on job"
  field.
- Safety sign-off treated as optional metadata rather than a gate.
- One layout described for both surfaces without saying which.

## Anti-Patterns

- **Review-only, never operational.** No welding procedure (WPS),
  no electrical work, no PPE selection guidance, no structural or
  fatigue-engineering advice — those require certified humans.
- **No generic prose.** "Consider shop-floor usability" fails the
  Anti-Generic Quality Bar — every observation cites traveler,
  heat number, sign-off, machine-time, or PPE.
- **No collapsing setup-and-run time.** Costing depends on the
  split; merging it for "UI simplicity" destroys the model.
- **No silent loss of material-cert link.** A flow that lets the
  chain break without an audit signal is rejected.
