Working with wage grades
Wage grades help you manage the labor rates associated with the various machines in a process group. If you assign the same wage grade to multiple machines, you can change the labor rate associated with those machines all at once, by changing the labor rate associated with the assigned wage grade. This means that instead of making a change to the Labor Rate field for every machine, you can make one change to the Labor Rate field of the assigned wage grade.
Working with wage grades involves working with the following types of tables:
• Skill Levels: each VPE has one Skill Levels table, which contains definitions of skill levels. Each wage grade associates a skill level and a process type (such as Metals or Plastics) with a labor rate. Each skill level is identified by a positive integer, and optionally has a name and description.
Starting point VPEs include some predefined skill levels. You can use the Skill Levels table to edit, add, and delete skill levels. See Managing skill levels.
• Wage Grades: each VPE has one Wage Grades table, which contains definitions of wage grades. Each wage grade is identified by a skill level and a process type (no two wage grades can have both the same skill level and the same process type). Each wage grade also has an associated labor rate, which you can change as needed.
Starting point VPEs include some predefined wage grades. You can use the Wage Grades table to modify, add, and delete wage grades. See Managing wage grades.
• Wage Grade Associations: each process group has one Wage Grade Associations table, which associates machines with wage grades.
Starting point VPEs have predefined wage grade associations that vary by process, but for machines within a process are always the same. You can use the Wage Grade Association table to modify these associations. You can also manage wage grade associations with the machine table for a process, or with the machine property Wage Grade Name for a specific machine. See Managing wage grade associations.
You can generate a Wage Grades report by selecting File > Export > Wage Grades. This report is an Excel file with one row for each machine in the VPE, grouped by process group and process; it displays Labor Rate, Skill Level, and Wage Grade field values for each machine. When you are ready to update your VPEs to use wage grades rather than labor rates for individual machines, you can use this report to review the spectrum of labor rates assigned to different processes and machines within a given process. You can even convert the report to a pivot table using standard functionality in Microsoft Excel, to help analyze the data. This can help you to determine how many wage grades should be established, and which wage grade should be associated with each process or machine.
You also can use this report to determine if a machine has a labor rate or wage grade specified in its machine field or if it is inheriting a labor wage grade association specified at the process level. If the labor rate or wage grade is specified for an individual machine, the Labor Rate, Skill Level, and/or Wage Grade columns will be populated in the row for that machine. If the machine is inheriting its values from the wage grade association at the process level, those fields will be blank.