Solutions
When one senior estimator has to touch every RFQ, the queue is the bid you lose. Put the shop's machine rates, labor rates and cost model in one place every quote pulls from, get the route built instead of rebuilding the takeoff, and have the shop-floor card that answers the job already open when it lands.
Where it shows up
Twenty RFQs came in this week and one person in the building can turn them into numbers. Everything else waits on that desk, and the customer waits on all of it.
When the chief estimator takes a week off, quotes either stop or go out on somebody's stand-in guess. Which one it was becomes clear about three months later, on the floor.
The same job priced by two people lands on two prices, because the machine rate each of them uses lives in their own spreadsheet and their own head, and neither sheet has been reconciled since the last time the electricity bill changed.
A part very like this one went out last spring. Nobody can find what was assumed about setups, stock, or the outside heat treat, so the whole takeoff is built again from the drawing up.
What it costs
An RFQ that sits four days is an RFQ somebody else answered. What that costs isn't estimator hours — it's the jobs you were never in the running for, plus the ones that went out under a stand-in's guess and came back thin. And on the day the person who holds the model retires, the shop pays to learn it again, one job at a time, in public.
How it plays out
Machine rates, labor rates and the cost model live in Rates Studio, set by the shop, and every quote across every process pulls from them. Two estimators running the same job pull the same numbers, because there is only one set of numbers to pull. CostDFM.
Every upload comes back with manufacturability findings before a process has been chosen, so nobody is sitting on a file waiting for the one person who can look at a part and say whether it's makeable. MFGDFM.
The route comes back built — tooling, forming, degating and fettling, heat treatment, machining, finishing, and the inter-department handling and queue time estimates usually drop — ranked cheapest, quickest or fewest steps, each step naming the rule behind it. RouteDFM.
A note captured on the floor in two taps — a photo, a video or a voice note plus a context tag — becomes a card carrying the symptom, the cause and the action, tagged by process, machine, alloy and part family. Open a job that matches and the card is already there. Partimation Core.
Already shipped
Spreading the work only helps if the work survives being handed over. Every cost line traces back to a named rate, a posture setting, or a rule in the engine — never an opaque total — so a quote built by whoever was free is a quote the chief estimator can audit line by line on Monday, and a quote the customer can push back on with something to push against. Decision support, not a substitute for your judgment: check it against your shop's practice before it goes out.
Built into CostDFM.
Built into CostDFM.
Built into MFGDFM.
Built into RouteDFM.
Built into Partimation Core.
Built into Partimation Core.
See it for your team
Architectural metalwork is the fabrication work somebody other than the chief estimator can price today: a browser configurator takes height, run and post spacing and returns tonnage, fit-up hours, weld metres, coating area, a should-cost curve and an execution-class traveler. Structural one-offs still wait on him.
A stainless valve body, twelve off, and the one person who prices this customer's work is away until Monday. Rates set once by the shop, manufacturability findings on upload, a strategy verdict per feature naming the requirement that decided it, and a ledger the chief estimator can audit line by line.
FAQ
Quoting does not stop dead once the rates and the cost model live in Rates Studio rather than in one person's spreadsheet. Anyone with a seat uploads the file, gets manufacturability findings and a ranked route, and sends a number built from the shop's own rates. Every line names the rule behind it, so the returning estimator can check the work.
One rate library, one cost model, set by the shop once and pulled by every quote across every process. What used to differ between two estimators was rarely the geometry — it was the shop rate each of them carried privately. With a single source under both quotes, a remaining difference points at an assumption somebody can actually go and find.
Most of what the senior does is not secret, only unwritten: which rate applies, what the route really includes, and what went wrong last time on a part like this. Rates live in the cost model, the route comes back built and ranked with each step naming its rule, and the shop-floor card tagged to that process and alloy opens with the job.
Two taps on a phone — a photo, a video or a voice note plus a context tag — is all a capture takes, which is the only version of the habit anyone on a floor sustains. What comes out is a card carrying the symptom, the cause and the action, tagged by process, machine, alloy and part family, waiting on the next job that matches it.
Speed here comes from not rebuilding work that was already done, not from skipping it. The route is built rather than remembered, the rates are the shop's own, and every line names its rate or rule — so a fast quote is one you can still take apart afterwards. A number nobody can explain is the one that gives margin away.
Get started
Send a model or a drawing and book a walkthrough — or start free and run one through yourself.
Book a demo
Tell us about your shop and we'll set up a walkthrough on a real part.