Role · Methods
How long have your routing times been out of date?
ROBIN measures every operation actually performed and compares it against the routing time. The gap becomes data, not intuition: your standards converge towards reality without a single sheet being re-entered, and the scheduler finally works from credible durations.
They already keep their routings reliable with ROBIN
The three figures
Three figures are enough to judge a routing.
These are the ones ROBIN calculates on every operation performed, and the ones that recur throughout the rest of this page.
Gaprouting / actual
The distance between standard and shop floor
Actual time against theoretical time, operation by operation. A stable 30 % gap is not a disruption, it is a wrong routing.
Dispersionof times
What is not under control
Two operators, two durations. When the standard deviation increases, the problem lies in the operating method, not in the people.
Coverageroutings measured
What you really know
The share of your routings backed by recent measurements. The rest relies on estimates that nobody can date any more.
Your challenges
Three things that freeze your standards.
They recur in every shop floor with complex flows: job shop, short runs, one-off parts or maintenance.
Standards nobody dares to correct
Changing a routing time requires a measurement, a validation and data entry. For lack of time, a value known to be wrong is kept — and the entire schedule relies on it.
Answer — ROBIN.DataFlow
- Theoretical routing2 h 00
- Measured (30 d)2 h 38
- Gap+32 %
The gap is calculated continuously from the declared operations. You correct on a measurement, not on a feeling.
The dispersion the average hides
Two hours on average can mean one hour thirty for one person and three hours for another. That is precisely where the potential lies, and the average erases it.
Answer — analysis by operation
- OP-2210 — drilling · 6 operatorsσ 42 min
- OP-2214 — inspection · 6 operatorsσ 4 min
Every operation can be analysed by workstation, by team and by period. The dispersion points to the operating method that needs reworking.
Every correction is a project
A routing change goes through methods, the ERP and scheduling. The process discourages corrections, and the gap widens year after year.
Answer — no-code workflows
No dev- Measurement
- Proposal
- Update
Updates go through configurable workflows, triggered on a gap threshold and validated by you.
The product
ROBIN, the platform that runs the shop floor in real time.
ROBIN has five modules. The one that concerns you first is the data layer: it is what measures reality.
ROBIN.DataFlow
Reality, measured operation by operation.
The shop floor data layer: events collected, gaps calculated, configurable update workflows.
- Routing / actual gap calculated continuously, with no re-keying
- Dispersion analysable by workstation, by team and by period
- No-code workflows to propagate a validated correction
Routing times converge towards reality.
Every declared operation corrects the theoretical time. Scroll through the weeks below: the gap between standard and shop floor narrows without a single sheet being re-keyed.
Continuous learning
The gap to reality closes by itself.
Every declared operation corrects the standard times. The plan stops drifting because it learns from the shop floor, not because someone readjusts it by hand.
Planned vs actual routing time
Deburring — finishing station · actual time / standard time ratio
current gap high · +26 %
production weeks
Average ratio
135 %
Standard deviation σ
± 15.2 %
Measurements
24 WOs
Schedule reliability
schedule adherence rate
77 %
Corrections proposed by Robin
Deburring — finishing station
takes +40 % longer than standard on average
Dimensional inspection — CMM
takes +22 % longer than standard on average
Sub-assembly A
takes +31 % longer than standard on average
Robin is observing your actual times… move the weeks forward to see the first corrections.
An order of magnitude modelled from our deployments, not a measurement from a client site.
The calculation
What time studies cost you.
Timing, entering, consolidating: manual time studies tie up your technicians and never cover more than a fraction of the routings. Enter your orders of magnitude.
Your methods department
Assumption: 75 % of manual timing replaced by automatic measurement of declared operations. Order of magnitude — the actual scope is defined during the diagnostic, on your data.
Your role
What you keep, and what you let go.
- You keep the decision: no routing is changed without your approval
- You let go of the stopwatch: measurement comes from declared operations
- You gain coverage: every routing measured, not just a sample
- You see the dispersion, and so which operating method to revisit
What ROBIN changes
Standards become living data again.
Continuous measurement, not a campaign
The gap is calculated on every declared operation. You no longer run time-study campaigns: the data is there, across all routings, all the time.
Scheduling you can trust
A schedule built on wrong times doesn't hold. When standards follow reality, promised dates become achievable — and the shop floor starts believing in the schedule again. A high rescheduling rate on an operation becomes readable: poorly sequenced routing, wrong times, or a genuinely suffered disruption — no longer a doubt that falls back on the default methods.
Corrections that get through
A workflow triggered on a gap threshold, methods validation, automatic propagation. The correction no longer dies in the process.
The results
What this delivers on a real shop floor.
The gains observed on a defined scope, and the customer case that documents them.
- +32 %gap observed between theoretical routing and actual time on a tracked operation
- 0stopwatch: measurement comes from declared operations
- −7 %lead time — observed at an aircraft repair shop
- < 3 monthsbetween the baseline and the first measured gaps
Customer case · Aircraft repair shop
Landing gear: 7% TAT gained without adding capacity.
A European MRO measures the gap between theoretical routings and actual times on its landing gear shop floor, and makes the scheduling that relies on them more reliable.
Read the customer case- −7 %of TAT on tracked equipment
- < 2 minto reschedule after a disruption
- 0rescheduling in Excel
The vendor
What you check before rebuilding your standards.
Your data stays under your control
European cloud hosting or on your own infrastructure, and export of your data at any time. No irreversible dependency.
Plugged into your IT systems
ROBIN reads the ERP and MES for routings, and sends back the measured and validated times.
- SAP
- Sage
- MES
- CMMS
No per-user cost
Giving the whole methods team access to routing data costs nothing extra.
A single point of contact
A ROBIN.Deploy project manager frames the definitions with you, configures the workflows and stays until you are self-sufficient.
Further reading
What we write for a methods department.
Dynamic scheduling · Thesis
MRO scheduling: why static scheduling drags down your TAT
It isn't variability that degrades TAT — it's the tool that pretends it doesn't exist.
Customer case · Aerospace
Reducing TAT on a landing gear shop floor
The project in detail: baseline, scope, measured results and deployment timeline.
FAQ · Methods
The questions we get asked in the methods department
How does ROBIN measure the actual time taken by an operation?
Does ROBIN modify my routings on its own?
No. It calculates the variance and proposes a correction; validation remains with the methods office. A workflow can then propagate the validated value to the ERP — never without your approval.
From how many occurrences is a deviation actionable?
This depends on the spread of the operation. ROBIN displays the number of occurrences and the standard deviation alongside the mean, so you can judge whether the sample is sufficient before making corrections.
Does it work for short runs or one-off parts?
Yes, that is in fact the primary use case. For one-off parts, measurement is taken by operation type rather than by part reference, which yields usable standards where traditional time studies never have a sufficient run size.
What happens to our ERP?
It remains the reference for routings and work orders. ROBIN feeds it the measured and validated times; it does not replace it.
How long before you have actionable variances?
The pilot starts on a defined scope and produces its first variances within a few weeks. A full scope is live in under 3 months.
Take action
Standards backed by measurement.
Send us an extract of your routings: we'll show you the gap to actual times on your own operations.