Operations/Labor on Jobs & New Product Release

We make large capital equipment with many subassembly levels. We
will end up using ABOM a lot. We are entertaining the idea of
redoing the way we release new products (right now we release product
via the ECO process). We are also coming to terms with what it means
to have more accurate operation times since we don't have a lot of
repetition in one large product and don't pay a lot of attention to
that today.

So two items here:

1) With the advent of Vantage and the quote/job/method buckets we
thought about prototyping in a Job and then Getting Details from that
job (in ABOM) when it is going to be released. Does anyone do this
or have any thoughts/contributions on this?

2) When you are designing/making something that you have never done
before...how do you go about filling in the operation times on the
first round? Estimate and update later? Blank and update later?
Another alternative?

Any input is appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
~ Ross