The most successful companies recognize that investing in capacity on their shop floor is only part of the equation.

If the team is unable to respond to quotes at a matched throughput, then the machines will sit idle. This situation can be especially thorny and difficult to diagnose in shops where personnel wear multiple hats and switch between quoting and shop floor.

In these shops, a feast-to-famine pattern typically emerges. Personnel will singularly focus on churning out parts, only to discover that the incoming quotes have been neglected, then they panic switch their focus to quoting, which means they now have a flood of incoming work, which means they need to churn out parts, and the pattern repeats.

Successful companies modestly overinvest in quoting relative to production to ensure a balanced load of work.

1. Remove Bottlenecks and Balance Quote Throughput

To keep machines operating at full capacity, streamlining the quoting process is a must. Top performers in the industry incorporate easy-to-use tools that standardize tribal knowledge allowing the operational expert to no longer be the bottle neck or single source of truth when it comes to quoting and estimating. By doing so, you can quickly generate accurate quotes by considering all the factors involved such as labor, material costs, machine run times, and overhead. This reduces time spent on quoting, increases the win rate, and frees up time for operational focus. If your estimating expert goes on vacation, the shop does not experience any delays in quoting throughput.

2. Standardize Operational Knowledge

There are key benefits of standardizing operational knowledge into a repeatable process. One of the most significant opportunities for most shops is material utilization. Provide your estimating team with a tool that single and multi-part nests to determine the optimal material usage. This will free up your programming department to focus on the orders you’ve already won, not speculative business. In the industry, the standard win rate on quotes completed is 30% which translates into non-value add quoting 70% of the time. That is a significant amount of a programmer’s time used for creating nests and determining material usage calculations for quotes that never materialize into sales. Additionally, standardization of operational knowledge enforces best practices, ensures compliance, and reduces errors in the quoting process. This will have a direct impact on operating costs and contribute to higher profitability.

3. Leverage Data to Beat Your Competition

The repeatability of data and quoting from a standardized tool provides the ability to enter quotes once, giving you the ability to refresh old quotes rather than requoting from the beginning. Not only does this eliminate the duplicate work required to quote repeat jobs, but the repeatability also gives you the foundation of data analytics informing your decision making across the organization. This level of insight will provide your team with the ability to see why you may not be competitive in key areas of your business. For example, historical data will help you discover why you are not winning as many orders where a particular operation is quoted. Potentially, you may be overpricing that operation relative to your competition, but you’d never discover this trend without the historical data. When you can see operations and processes relative to each other, you will begin to see the key data trends that make you less competitive. An analytics dashboard with side by side operational, material, and labor comparisons gives you deeper insight to grow your business and target key customers and partners for optimal growth. This double click into your business provides a clearer view into areas of your shop where you may not be as competitive taking the guess work out of your go-to-market strategy. With material being much of a job’s cost, inventory usage data by material type provides your purchasing team with the knowledge needed to make more informed inventory decisions, which in turn reduces inventory holding costs.

4. Appeal to a New Generation of Workers

Modernization and the implementation of new technologies significantly enhance a company’s appeal to a younger generation of workers. As the current generation of workers retires in waves, it becomes even more crucial to attract the next generation to ensure a steady influx of talent and maintain a competitive edge in the market. For current employees, this means reduced frustration with outdated systems and increased job satisfaction, which aids in retention. Simultaneously, younger generations, who are accustomed to and expect cutting-edge technology, are more likely to stay in their roles once hired. Younger generations are more likely to switch jobs at higher rates than generations past, so providing the requisite tools to perform their jobs well should factor into your cost considerations.

Regardless of the size of your shop, you should be asking yourself how to overcome the complexities associated with balancing operational shop floor focus verses quote throughput with a goal of ensuring you have the right toolset in place to achieve a balance.

As you look to find a solution for your business that increases throughput, reduces complexity, and allows faster response times to your customers, it is important that you realize balancing time between quoting and the shop floor is not a tradeoff you have to make any longer. With a small investment in your quoting technology toolset, you will forever reshape your business and future.