Solutions
A quote nobody can take apart is a quote nobody can defend. Partimation builds the price as an itemized ledger where every cost line traces to a named rate, posture setting, or engine rule — and every estimate carries a confidence band that states which of four bases it rests on.
Where it shows up
A buyer pushes back on a price and the only thing on the page is a total. Somebody opens the spreadsheet, rebuilds the takeoff from scratch, and hopes it lands where it landed three weeks ago.
The same job priced by two people comes back different, and neither can point at the line that differs. Consistency is whoever happened to build the quote that day.
A price goes out with nothing stated about what it rests on — a published average, your own job history, or a rule — so nobody knows which quotes deserved a second look before they were sent.
The tool cost is one line with a story attached. The buyer can't check it, so they treat the whole quote as padded and open the negotiation on the part price instead.
What it costs
Margin, from both directions at once. A price you can't take apart gets discounted to keep the customer, or held and lost to a shop that could show its work. The jobs won on a gut number are the same jobs that come back as the ones run at a loss, and nothing in the quote told you which was which until the actuals landed. In between, an estimator's afternoon goes into rebuilding a takeoff that already exists — and the argument with the buyer still ends up being your word against theirs.
How it plays out
Rates, station posture, setup, and tooling amortization are computed the same way whether the job gets milled, welded, printed, or cast, and every cost line traces back to a named rate, a posture setting, or a rule in the engine — never an opaque total. Every estimate carries a confidence value that names its basis: a published prior, a calibration off your own actuals, a deterministic rule, or a flag that it needs human review. CostDFM.
The route is built out in full — tooling, forming, degating and fettling, heat treatment, machining, finishing, and the inter-department handling and queue time estimates usually leave off — then ranked cheapest, quickest, and fewest-steps, with each step naming the rule that put it there. RouteDFM.
Dies, molds, patterns, and core boxes price off one shared block-and-machining model, and the amortization is spread into the per-piece curve rather than dropped on the quote as a single number the buyer has to take on faith. ToolDFM.
A should-cost curve at every quantity, plus the exact crossover quantity where one manufacturing method gets cheaper than another — closed-form, not eyeballed off a chart. A buyer arguing about price is usually arguing about quantity, and that is a conversation you can win with a curve. ProcessDFM.
Already shipped
A confidence number on its own is decoration. Partimation states which of four things every result rests on: a published prior, a calibration built from your own shop's actuals, a deterministic rule, or a flag that the result needs human review. Reading the basis tells you what to do next — a deterministic rule needs no second opinion, and a needs-human-review flag is where an estimator's remaining time actually belongs. Suggest a correction on a cost line when the job runs, and the bands tighten around your own performance instead of a published average.
Built into CostDFM.
Built into CostDFM.
Built into RouteDFM.
Built into ToolDFM.
Built into ProcessDFM.
See it for your team
Twelve grey-iron manifolds off printed sand, and the customer's engineer wants the price broken down before he approves a pattern. Here is what a foundry can show him: the route including degating, fettling and queue time, a ledger where every line names its rate or rule, and a confidence basis per number.
A renewal price arrives with a total on it and nothing else. Build an independent should-cost off the released STEP first: an itemized ledger where every line names its rate, a confidence band naming which of four bases it rests on, and the exact quantity where a cheaper process takes over.
FAQ
Hand over the ledger. Every cost line traces to a named rate, a posture setting, or a rule in the engine, so the conversation moves off your word against theirs and onto a rate they can check and a quantity break they can read for themselves. Where a line rests on a published prior rather than your own recorded actuals, the quote says so rather than hiding it.
Because each spreadsheet encodes a different set of assumptions and none of them are written down anywhere. One cost model across every process produces the same lines whoever runs the job, and where two quotes still differ, the difference shows up as a named line rather than a different total. A disagreement you can point at is a disagreement you can settle.
Read the basis on the confidence band before anything else. Four are possible: a published prior, a calibration built from your own shop's actuals, a deterministic rule, or a flag that the number needs human review. A deterministic rule needs no second opinion. A needs-human-review flag is exactly where the last half hour before the quote goes out belongs.
Show them the tool priced by the same block-and-machining model used for dies, molds, patterns, and core boxes, then amortized into the per-piece curve rather than dropped on the quote as a lump sum. A buyer arguing about tooling is usually arguing about quantity, and the should-cost curve moves that argument onto the quantity where the tool actually pays back.
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