Agility wins in manufacturing: A webcast on automated quoting

Agility is at the core of custom metal fabricators and other manufacturers who want a successful quote-to-cash cycle . And that's even more important as the industry recovers from the COVID-19 crisis. Getty Images

Later this month The FABRICATOR, in partnership with Paperless Parts, will host a webcast on automated quoting, a topic that’s bound to become even more important as the industry navigates the current coronavirus crisis and ultimate recovery. Why, exactly? It starts with agility.

Agility is at the core of custom manufacturers, and today successful job shops are proving their mettle. Being agile hinges on having accurate, current, comprehensible information. This has to do with another aspect that puts custom parts manufacturing in a good place during this recession: cash flow. Good information helps shops reduce inventory and dramatically shorten the quote-to-cash cycle.

Consider a precision sheet metal fabricator circa 1995. The company grew off the backs of several large customers whose work dominates the shop floor. It has a very low bid-win rate for new customers, which is no surprise. It takes a long time to prepare a quote, after all. More often than not, the shop bids too late, and the customer has moved on.

No matter. The company’s bread-and-butter work continues to churn along. And with a limited job mix, the shop needn’t juggle a massive amount of information at lightning speed. That’s good … right?

That’s debatable, but what can’t be debated is the risks, the first of which has to do with inventory. To keep things simple and “save on setup,” the company produces large batches, which creates a lot of work-in-process. More WIP means more lead time, so to meet customer lead-time requirements, the fabricator has no choice but to maintain a robust finished-goods inventory. This makes the second risk even worse: Amid a crisis, major customers pull orders. The fabricator suddenly is left with cash tied up in obsolete inventory.

Now consider a precision sheet metal fabricator circa 2020. It has a highly diverse customer base with hundreds or even thousands of active accounts, and no one customer makes up a huge percentage of the revenue pie. Jobs flow from raw stock to the shipping dock in two weeks or less. Setups are streamlined. Quoting is automated, bid-win rates are healthy, and so is business growth. Job information is updated continually on tablets and monitors placed throughout the shop floor.

Then an unprecedented crisis hits. Some customers stop production altogether. Others scramble to launch new products for other industries. The agile fabricator in 2020 moves with them, offering front-office technology that can return quotes in minutes, not hours, days, or weeks.

It’s no cakewalk, and revenue declines. But the shop isn’t down for the count either. No doubt, the fab shop must deal with an extremely significant economic recession, a circumstance unique in its history. But is it an economic paralysis? For the agile fabricator, not at all.

For more on automated quoting –both for sheet metal parts and assemblies—check out The FABRICATOR’s webcast, in partnership with Paperless Parts, May 21 at 2 p.m. EST.