Good morning/afternoon/evening (whichever happens to apply in your case).
I'm in the process of planning and doing research for a major crafting overhaul mod. One area of research is making crafting require time. This feature also happens to be one that has been requested by others, so I started thinking that I should just make this into its own mod and then I can build on top of it for the larger crafting overhaul.

In its current form the new crafting system works in the following way:
You activate a crafting station, which brings up the crafting menu. If you craft/temper an item, then you start the crafting/tempering animation after the menu closes. If you do not craft/temper anything, then nothing happens after you close the menu. The amount of time that you spend in the animation is determined by the amount and type of items that you craft/temper. So crafting a cuirass will take more time than crafting a ring and crafting multiple identical items requires more time than crafting just one of those items.

A side effect of how this system is implemented is that you cannot force NPCs to stop using the crafting station. I don't see this as an issue because usually the NPC is the owner of the crafting station and it is needed for their profession. Would a blacksmith stop working, thereby probably forfeiting a part of their income, just so that some random person can use their tools without compensation?

I plan on making it possible to customize most aspects of this mod in SkyUI's MCM or via the console. Here are the options I currently have planned and/or implemented:
-Switch between the vanilla and new crafting systems while playing.
This has been implemented, the only restriction is that you have to leave the cell and enter it again for this option to take effect.

-Select the amount of time needed to craft/temper different types of armor (boots, helmet, etc.), weapons (dagger, sword, etc.), ammunition (arrows, bolts), potions/poisons, enchanting, ingots, food, miscellaneous items.
Partially implemented, but I have the system almost completely worked out.

-Select how different materials change crafting time, if at all.
Has not been implemented, but it is something I might add if there is interest.

I'd like to get some feedback on some aspects of the mod.

-How should time spent crafting work?
I'm currently thinking about making the time needed to craft a certain type of item be in hours of ingame time. The actual time spent in the animation, per type of item, would be defined as a set amount of seconds/minutes of real time for every hour of ingame time. So if you need to spend 3 hours crafting an item, define each hour of ingame time as 10 seconds of real time and you start at ten o'clock in the morning, then by the time you're finished it'll be one o'clock in the afternoon. The time of day would change accordingly in intervals or by temporarily changing the timescale (as long as making the timescale have a large value doesn't break anything).

-Should the type of material affect crafting time?
For example should making an iron cuirass require less time than making a steel or dwarven cuirass? Essentially some materials are more difficult to work with than others (*cough* glass *cough*). This could probably be implemented as a factor that multiplies the time needed to craft a type of item.

-Does the NPC side effect I mentioned earlier bother you?

Feel free to suggest additional features or options, but I can't guarantee that any suggestions will be implemented. I'm going to try to make this mod flexible, so I want to stick to using vanilla resource like keywords present in
Skyrim.esm and Update.esm. As for DLC support, I will make separate versions that add support for the new crafting stations and items.