A request for quote lands in the inbox of a twenty-five-person precision machining shop: four part numbers, quantities of 50, 200 and 500, PDF drawings and STEP files, anodized finish, material certificates required. The person who quotes is the owner, who is also running production, chasing a late material delivery and dealing with a machine that's down. He gets to the RFQ on Thursday, needs a price from the anodizer, and sends the quote the following Tuesday. The customer has already placed the order with a shop that replied on Friday.
Quoting in a job shop is skilled work. Reading a drawing, spotting the features that will cause trouble, judging setup and cycle times and knowing which jobs to chase all take experience. Most of the hours in a quote, though, go into extracting information from emails and drawings, looking up material prices, chasing outside processing quotes and typing it all into a spreadsheet and then a quote document. Those are the hours that can be taken off the estimator's plate.
This article covers what to write down before automating quoting, and what an automated RFQ flow does with your ERP, your past jobs and your email.
What slow quoting costs
Lost work is the obvious cost, especially with customers who send the same RFQ to several shops and order from the first credible reply. Less obvious is that slow quoting pushes the estimator into shortcuts: rounding up to be safe, which loses work, or quoting from memory, which wins work that turns out unprofitable.
There's also a hidden opportunity cost when the estimator is the owner. Every hour spent typing up quotes is an hour not spent on production problems, customer relationships or the decisions only the owner can make.
Fix the quoting rules before you automate
Write down your rates and standards
Record hourly rates by machine group or work center, standard setup times by operation type, inspection time allowances, and minimum charges. If the owner prices from instinct, sit down with him and turn that instinct into numbers. It won't capture everything, but it captures most of what makes quotes consistent.
Know your material and outside processing costs
Keep a current material price list with your markup, and decide how often it's refreshed, because metal prices move. For outside processing such as anodizing, plating or heat treatment, agree price lists or standing quotes with your regular vendors, so a quote doesn't stall waiting for a reply.
Use your own job history
Your ERP likely holds actual setup and run times for past jobs, if operators record them properly. Those actuals are the best estimating data you have. Check whether they're recorded consistently, and fix the recording before relying on it.
Decide what you want to quote
Write down your capability limits, such as maximum part size, materials, tolerances and certifications, and the kinds of work you'd prefer not to take. Quick, polite declines for work outside your sweet spot save time on both sides.
Standardize the quote document
One template with your terms, validity period, lead time basis, assumptions and exclusions makes every quote easier to produce and easier for customers to compare.
What the automated RFQ flow does
- Reads the request. When an RFQ arrives by email or through a customer portal, the system pulls out the customer, part numbers, revisions, quantities, requested dates and requirements such as material certifications or first article inspection.
- Reads the drawings. From the drawing's title block and notes, it extracts material, finish, general tolerances, critical dimensions and special requirements. Anything it can't read clearly is marked for the estimator.
- Checks fit. It compares the requirements with your capability rules and flags anything outside them, so the estimator can decide quickly whether to decline or proceed.
- Finds similar past work. It searches your job history for comparable parts by material, size, features and operations, and pulls their actual setup and run times and costs.
- Drafts the estimate. Material cost comes from your price list. Times are based on the comparable jobs, with clear notes on which jobs were used. Outside processing comes from vendor price lists, or a request goes to the vendor automatically. Quantity breaks are calculated from your setup and run time split.
- Highlights uncertainty. Tight tolerances, unusual features, missing information and anything without a good comparable are listed at the top for the estimator.
- Estimator reviews. The estimator checks the draft, adjusts times and prices where judgment says so, and approves it.
- Sends and tracks. The quote document is generated from your template, sent, and logged in your ERP or CRM. A follow-up reminder is set, and when the customer decides, the win or loss is recorded with the reason.
- Learns from actuals. When a quoted job runs, the actual times are compared with the quoted ones, and the comparison feeds back into future estimates.
The estimator still makes the calls that need a machinist's eye. What changes is that he starts from a prepared draft with the information gathered and the comparable jobs in front of him, so a quote that used to take an afternoon can be reviewed in a fraction of the time.
That's the job our instant quote builder does for manufacturers, built on your own rates and history. For formal tenders and longer RFQ responses, the proposal and bid writer drafts the written sections from your past bids and certifications. The manufacturing page shows how quoting connects to job tracking, job costing and inventory.
A worked example
Take the machining shop from the opening. The owner spends two afternoons writing down machine rates, setup standards and material markups, and agrees standing price lists with the anodizer and the heat treater. Operators start scanning job start and finish at each work center, which makes past job times reliable within a couple of months. When the four-part RFQ arrives, the system reads the email and drawings, picks out the 6061 aluminum, the anodized finish and the material certificate requirement, and finds three similar brackets made in the past year with their actual times. It drafts an estimate for each quantity break, with anodizing priced from the standing list, and flags one tight positional tolerance on the second part for the owner's attention. He reviews the drafts on Thursday morning, adjusts the cycle time on the flagged part, and the quote goes out before lunch.
What to watch out for
- Confidential and controlled drawings. Customer drawings often come under NDA, and some are export-controlled. Make sure the system processes them in an environment that meets those obligations, and restrict who can see them.
- Stale material prices. If the price list isn't refreshed, every automated quote inherits the error. Assign an owner and a refresh schedule.
- Poor historical data. If operators log time inconsistently, comparable jobs will mislead. Fixing time recording is often the most valuable side effect of a quoting project.
- Complex or novel parts. Parts unlike anything you've made before need an estimator's full attention. The system should say when it has no good comparable, and leave the estimate to a person.
- Promising lead times without checking capacity. A fast quote with a lead time the shop can't meet creates a different problem. Check the schedule, or at least the load on the bottleneck machines, before committing to dates.
How to tell whether it's working
Track time from RFQ to quote, quotes sent per week, and win rate by customer, alongside the reasons recorded for losses. Compare quoted and actual times on jobs you win, by operation, since persistent gaps show where the estimating rules need adjusting. Watch how much the estimator changes the drafts and where, because the edits are the best guide to what the system is getting wrong. Over time, margin on won jobs matters as much as win rate, since winning more work at the wrong price leaves the shop busier and no better off.
Where to start this week
Pull your last fifty RFQs and record when each arrived, when you replied, and whether you won. Even without drawing conclusions about cause, the list will show how long quotes really take and which customers you're responding to slowly. Then write down your machine rates, setup standards and material markups on one page, and agree standing price lists with your two most-used outside processors.
Finally, start recording a reason for every lost quote. Those three steps make your quoting more consistent straight away, and they give any automated system the rules and history it needs to produce drafts your estimator can trust.
If you'd like a quick read on where quoting sits among the other jobs worth automating in your plant, run the free PATH report on your website. To talk it through with us, book a call.