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Average quote turn around time for custom tooling ?

Laurentian

Stainless
Joined
Mar 2, 2008
Location
Canada
Hello friends, curious to know how long it should take to turn out a quote on custom tooling and or job shop work ? Many of our present accounts seem to require quotes back within a couple days ( 3 ) or a week latest. However I've run into some types that are hot to trot and expect quotes back within 24 hours.. I tend to not do well when pressured for fast quoting unless I'm well rested and in the right frame of mind or very familiar with the job. Also noticed many now rely on email only and don't even bother calling ( millenials LOL ) Where I do best is putting the quote together and letting it sit overnight and then go through it fresh again the next day. Reason I post this is I let a nice job slip through my fingers on account of quoting too high and quick due to pressure and distraction, just plain had too many things going on. I'm thinking of simply emailing back the fast paced RFQ's originators with something like "we're looking over your quote please give us till XX day so that we can give you our best quote possible" :scratchchin:
 
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They want you to just "wing it" and see if you screw up with too low
of a bid (miss some important/expensive feature like hardened d-2 instead of a-2)

Hurry up, but remember it's a legal document.....
 
Less than a week sounds right, but one day seems extreme to me. I remember "quoting" (no pun intended :D) a job because my boss, the owner, was out on vacation and we needed to get it done.

I was rather shocked at what I learned.
1) I was told to not use round figures as this particular customer thought we were just rounding everything up (ie, if it was for 3 hours labor plus material, add a few cents here and there to make it something like $213.76) :confused:
2) I was given old pricing on similar details to work from, not a big deal, but see #3
3) Our prices seemed extremely exorbitant(?) as I personally worked on quite a few of these details and knew exactly how long they took, rough-heat treat-finish-polish-package, etc

I don't have any real advice, but what you said sounds good to me "we're looking over your quote please give us till XX day so that we can give you our best quote possible. "
I think it is reasonable to expect some response within 24* hours, but a full quote... not so much..

edit: typo
 
It really just depends on the customer and what is being quoted.

When I was quoting, 24hr turn around on "regular" part out of 6061 was expected an easy to do.

Quoting a hastelloy job at moderate quantities would take a couple days to figure out tooling cost, materials, etc.

Quoting quantities of 50,000 a month where equipment we didn't have was needed could take several weeks to quote.
 
Crap rolls down hill, their customers are pressing for faster turn arounds so they need a supplier who can similarly accommodate. With guys like Harvey, Internal and numerous other suppliers offering no extra charge customs or 1 to 2 day turn around they're catering to a specific market.

As far as the emails go, I doubt it has anything to do with us Millennials and more to do with having a record. If you promise me one thing on the phone but won't put that same promise in writing then something smells a little fishy.
 
True that, sorry about the millennial quip haha. Buyer in question is a young girl and I simply got the feeling she's fast paced. We got an order from her before and her emails tended to be hard to keep up to.. This time I simply got overconfident and fired off my quote knowing I was sort of high. Tend to shoot myself in foot at times when overworked trying to keep up. Moving forward and always learning, need to be less trusting and figure others are after the same piece of work. Not like we're the only ones out there..

I also find having a previously made like part in hands on desk or nearby while preparing the quote helps, just to enable wrapping one's mind around the job. That and going as far back as possible in invoice archives. Plus being alone in the shop dead quiet..
 
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I usually try to quote within 24 hrs but bigger jobs or bigger packages or jobs are often a couple of days. I often get requests for Rush quotes where they want it in a couple of hours. If I am more that 24-48 hrs I often get prompts looking for the quotes from certain customers.

I suspect some of this comes down to the Crap rolling downhill mentioned above. Buyer sends package to machine shop he sits on it for a day or 2 he sends it to the foundry who then sits on it for another day or 2. Foundry sends the tooling RFQ to me about the time the buyer is calling the machine shop to ask where is my quote?
 
You sound like we are going through the same issue with everything being E-mailed and fast. It is the way things have been for about a decade now. I am late to the game due to a stubborn father not wanting to upgrade things around our shop. I am waiting on an internet line run to the shop finally and have to do the email thing after work. I cannot have conversations in real time this way and I have seen some jobs get awarded before I can even get a material quote back.

Its just the way things are now. Customers have ERP software that can do all kinds of quoting from looking over similar parts and what you made them for in the past. Dont ever rush yourself. This is how mistakes get made. You have the right idea with your way of quoting. I go through the same thing every day. Always sleep on it. First thing in the morning your brain is as clear as it will be all day and after a day or 2 of thinking about the job it will be easier to quote.

The quick quotes are all from experience. You will not get every job you quote and you are not always set up the best for every job out there (someone has a better/more efficient way). Just keep at it and it will work out.

I recently quoted around 50-70 jobs. I got 2 of them from 1 customer, and recently got a 3rd from the same customer. If my theory is right I need to quote around 2000 jobs to get the 25 that will keep me busy for years to come. Just the way it works.

Dan
 
Wow Dan, thanks man. You too buddy hang in there we'll eventually get a better batting average. Thing is I used to expect better customer loyalty or at least a head's up like "Hey you're way high are you sure about that quote" or a can you do better ? I should of known, a new buyer always spells trouble and I have to re-learn their methods every time.

I also find researching the customer helps, looking up their website and finding out how many staff , size of company etc.
In Québec we have ICRIQ which has a database on the specifics of each manufacturing company in the province. All that combined gives a better gut feeling about what they do and expect from us.

Couple issues as well : overconfidence, FOMO, low balling to get the job ( race to the bottom ) All interesting stuff. I'm reading a book on stock trading psychology called "The Daily Trading Coach: 101 Lessons for Becoming Your Own Trading Psychologist" and the similarities with trading stocks and quoting jobs, business life are striking.
 
When I quote your average Sheet Metal part or assembly I typically turn the quote in 8 hours or less.

But I require your Solidworks Model. Sending a set of PDF Prints helps...if I have to print your SW drawings to PDF it adds a little time. If I have to make prints it adds more.

The assumptions are it is your everyday design using normal materials, normal hardware and normal finishes. Adding things out of the norm adds time.

Our database is 22 years old and kept up to speed so it is a matter of populating the fields and building the quote from there. I have an agreement with our outside service suppliers they will turn my quotes from a pdf print (since most don't have SW) in 4 hours or less. They know I am a committed partner and their hit rates will be higher because of that but they need to keep inline based on market conditions.

Since January 1st we have averaged 29.7 Quotes per day with 3.25 Account Managers. The Account Managers do what their job description says...manage the account. So they are calling making sales, doing their own quotes and some project Management and other related items. Every unique part has it's own quote even if it is going into an assembly. Based on our growth and sales strategy we have only increased the quote load per day by 2 quotes per day in 6 years but have grown the business by 33% in the same period. That tells me based on our sales strategy we are targeting the right partners (Customers) and employee base has grown only by 16.6%. All good things...

But if you need a quote faster than 8 hours I use this:
 

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Hi Laurentian:
A lot depends on what kind of work you're quoting.

For example: I build injection molds as a part of my business.
I quote them totally differently from the process I use for production parts which I also make.
I also do prototyping and often don't quote those jobs at all but bill them in chunks until the job is done or the customer gives up on the project.
Sometimes I spend days sorting out designs, sometimes I get a toleranced print with everything on it and those get different quoting strategies too.

I can quote a fairly complex mold in about an hour, but I'm mostly winging it; judging by experience whether it's a hundred hour job, or a hundred fifty hour job, and then just let the chips fall where they will.
I very rarely get my ass handed back to me, but I also very rarely score a windfall.
It averages out, so overall I'm modestly profitable.

Some others will try to break it down in detail, and quote each mold component as if it were a separate jobbing project.
They can spend weeks noodling with it only to screw up the quote just as badly as I occasionally do because something major got overlooked or the job got awarded to someone else while they were picking over the details.
Huge amounts of work you'll never get paid for gets wasted that way, so I decided a long time ago it's cheaper to misjudge and get an ass burning once in a while than to consistently do a ton of work for free and still only score some of the jobs I'd put all that up-front effort into.

By contrast, sometimes a relatively simple high volume production part takes days to quote if I have to define the processes, sort out cycle times and workflow, sort out material costs etc etc etc...we all know the drill.
The thing is, (as we also all know) with volume parts a small error has big cumulative consequences, so you need to be careful in a whole different way if you want to avoid hair tearing money losers.

So the small simple part is deceptively risky in a way that the complicated mold build is not...yes you surely can get your ass handed to you on both kinds of work but a gnarly chunk of mold base alloy you can somehow get through; a gnarly bundle of steel bars you need twice as long to drill and use up twice as many inserts to make 500 parts from, sinks the job in a whole different way, often because the margins are so much smaller and the time commitment is so much tighter, and the misjudgement bites you 500 times instead of just once.

So yeah, different approaches for different stuff, but the overall objective is still to put in the minimum unpaid work until you actually get the gig.
Once you do get the gig, the fun begins and you get to find out if your guesstimates pan out.

Cheers

Marcus
Implant Mechanix • Design & Innovation > HOME
Vancouver Wire EDM -- Wire EDM Machining
 
IMHO some of you guys seriously need to get up to speed. Not having email in a shop in 2019, yeah you deserve to be losing work. You have to keep the office side of the shop moving with the times just like shop side! The worlds not going to stand still just because the owner is getting older. Hell lots of the places i deal with - get supplied by me or supply me nothing but product gets shipped, all communication is digital, both for speed and for cost.

Everyone wants faster, cheaper and better, sure the old saying of pick any 2 still holds true, but IMHO you really gotta be delivering all 3 as much as you can. If you can not deliver all 3 all the way through the order process you have a big spot your competition can get a foot hold and out do you. Speed is oftern as key as lowest price these days.

Quotes IMHO im strongly of the view you want to not get them all, if your winning 100% your not maximizing your profit. Start losing work though because it takes you too long to get the quote in, yeah that's a problem you have to work on. How fast you can then get pricing off your suppliers can also be a big part of this. Its one of the reasons i pretty much only deal with laser cutters that have a online live quotation system that i can log into and get a price there and then. Waiting a week for my quote to get processed would get me no were with my customer base.

Quote wise i very much base most things of previous jobs, think materials + outside processes times a multiplier. I have long given up trying to price every line item on a assy and then add it all up, time and motion study style, sure its the way to get the keenest price, i do have really well proven numbers for pricing on a simple drilled hole, a drilled + tapped hole etc. but outside of higher qty work it bumps the price - effort to quote too high for what some jobs are even worth winning to price out and add up every individual feature. For me its better to have the odd job i lose a little on labour wise than it is to spend a vast chunk of the weeks labor on ultra detailed quotation, which does not pay anything.
 
I would expect a same-day response with an estimate of when the quote will be sent, unless the quote will be same-day or next-day. There are times I've sent an RFQ to half a dozen shops, gotten responses from two within 24 hours, waited two more days, placed the order, then received two more quotes, one of which would have been better. This is especially an issue when lead-time is more important than price, since the longer I wait for the quote the later the parts will be.
 
I would expect a same-day response with an estimate of when the quote will be sent, unless the quote will be same-day or next-day. There are times I've sent an RFQ to half a dozen shops, gotten responses from two within 24 hours, waited two more days, placed the order, then received two more quotes, one of which would have been better. This is especially an issue when lead-time is more important than price, since the longer I wait for the quote the later the parts will be.

Nailed it Mhaj, my thoughts exactly. Being I received the RFQ on a Friday late morning I didn't bother responding, as I was doing quotes the Saturday with view to send over the weekend, which I did. NEXT time am going to fire off reply right away when to expect our quote. This buys me time for better evaluation and allows me to come down if I've been under pressure on other jobs. I've done this touch base right away thing a few times before on large projects and it works great, so thanks again for the reminder ! I'm on good terms with the aforementioned buyer above and let her know that now that we know where we are situated price wise we will be very competitive going forward. I posted / vented all of this as it hurts to have a 25 year customer purchase elsewhere for one of the first times. The other guys would of told me I'm high.. just saying and yes I have to keep up with the times even if I'm getting older.
 
Late to the game, but I thought I would throw this in.

My wife is a lot better, or rather, more in the know, when it comes to business "best practices".

Her employees are expected to respond to emails within the hour. WITHIN THE HOUR.

I told her the other week I had a customer buy a part online. He bought it at 1AM. By 9AM I had three emails from him. By NOON I had 8. When I finally checked my email that afternoon around 4 o'clock, I had 12 emails with the last 2 asking to cancel the order since I was "non-responsive".

I do not make anything that anyone's life depends on... :nutter::willy_nilly:

To specifically answer your question, the shop that makes my custom tooling will usually get me a spitball quote within a couple hours. They bill time and materials. Usually I can have the tooling in 2-3 days. And it is usually REALLY custom...

I have no idea how someone can expect you to make a quote in 24hrs. Unless they want you to make simple stupid parts? Hell, it takes me 24hrs to get responses from my steel and tooling suppliers.
 
IMHO some of you guys seriously need to get up to speed. Not having email in a shop in 2019, yeah you deserve to be losing work.

Hell, less than 10 years ago, most of the customers I worked with were not PERMITTED to use email due to "security". Prints and documents all delivered discussed in person or on the phone. These were NOT little companies...
 
Hell, less than 10 years ago, most of the customers I worked with were not PERMITTED to use email due to "security". Prints and documents all delivered discussed in person or on the phone. These were NOT little companies...

Yeah, 10 years ago maybe. See were that practice would get you today outside of high security clearance work! Again there's a good reason that several larger companies have struggled, being dynamic in there approaches to all aspects of business is one of them.

Online material prices are available from ever more suppliers.

Choice is your own, but just don't come crying when the rest of the world moves faster and gets the job whilst your sitting there doing your time and motion study and waiting on the best material price to come in via post.

My background - first job out of school was print. The print trade is highly dynamic, right now you could go online and order seriously large volumes here in the uk at even 1am simply uploading your own PDF files, weather that be hard back bound books of cheap fliers. You can pay for and have some pretty impressive qty's of work on a pre 10am delivery that very morning if you wish. If you think this trades not going to follow suit your mistaken. Multi weeks lead times are going to dry up ever more. Ever faster response times going to be a must at every step of the order process.

Sure the 1am customer is delusional expecting a follow up before std office hours, but to not heard back and positively at that by mid day the very next working day IMHO is bad form on pretty much any suppliers side.
 
I told her the other week I had a customer buy a part online. He bought it at 1AM. By 9AM I had three emails from him. By NOON I had 8. When I finally checked my email that afternoon around 4 o'clock, I had 12 emails with the last 2 asking to cancel the order since I was "non-responsive".

That customer may be a bit ridiculous, but honestly I think you're missing the ball if you got through most of a work day without responding to a customer. You miss the shipping window for the day and that's another day the customer is waiting for the part, whether it's important or not. You are competing with Amazon Prime on your delivery time...even if the things you sell aren't on Amazon. It sounds crazy but it's true.

Maybe this is a result of spending a fair amount of time in inside sales, but my work flow is always customer focused. It doesn't mean I break from what I'm doing to solve a customer's problem (unless they're on the phone and worked up about it), but I break up my day and address all the communications I've gotten throughout it at certain points. I'm an engineer, so a huge portion of what I'm really paid to do (but which isn't actually paid) is communicating with people. If anything, running a shop and selling your own product means it should be higher on your list than mine, IMO.
 
That customer may be a bit ridiculous, but honestly I think you're missing the ball if you got through most of a work day without responding to a customer. You miss the shipping window for the day and that's another day the customer is waiting for the part, whether it's important or not. You are competing with Amazon Prime on your delivery time...even if the things you sell aren't on Amazon. It sounds crazy but it's true.

Maybe this is a result of spending a fair amount of time in inside sales, but my work flow is always customer focused. It doesn't mean I break from what I'm doing to solve a customer's problem (unless they're on the phone and worked up about it), but I break up my day and address all the communications I've gotten throughout it at certain points. I'm an engineer, so a huge portion of what I'm really paid to do (but which isn't actually paid) is communicating with people. If anything, running a shop and selling your own product means it should be higher on your list than mine, IMO.

Yes and no, I don’t agree that I’m competing with amazon. Nothing I make, or even resell, is on amazon. The products I make, are not available anywhere, for any lead time or price, short of having them made yourself. I make the products I make because of the market. I don’t want to make 10,000 widgets and compete with China and every starving shop in the US.

Another point is, you have to deal with the customers you have to deal with, presumably because your boss/supervisor tells you to. I’ve learned that I am happy to lose 20% of my customers. That lets me focus on the 80% that are good to great customers. All of my good to great customers know I will get back to them, and I have days where I am otherwise occupied. The dingbat I mentioned above is an obsessive moron that I do not want as a customer.


I guess I live in a little microcosm of traditional old fashioned businesses. My steel supplier takes a week to deliver steel, 3 days if I want to pick it up, heat treat is a week, my biggest wholesaler is a good old fashioned 2-3 weeks, if you can get ahold of someone. I’m still waiting on pricing from 3 months ago.

So I guess my thought is, currently I have a lot of good customers who keep me busy who do not expect email responses in less than 24 hours, who do not expect 2-day delivery, and understand that I’m a one man band. They also know that IF they need an immediate response they can use some good old fashioned technology called a telephone. Course with the amount of spam calls I get, I ignore the phone almost as much as emails anymore. . .
 








 
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