No single intake point. RFQs land in 3-4 different inboxes and voicemails. Some sit for days before anyone sees them.
Drawings buried in email threads. Attachments in mixed formats (PDF, STEP, IGES). No standard way to log that an RFQ was received.
Customer never hears back. No tracking of declined RFQs. Lost data for win/loss analysis.
Manual, tedious process. Estimator must interpret every feature, tolerance, finish, and material callout. Easy to miss details on multi-sheet drawings.
Adds 1-3 days to quoting cycle. Some estimators skip this and guess rather than risk looking unprepared. Assumptions here become rework downstream.
Past quotes live in old folders, spreadsheets, or the estimator's memory. When estimators retire, this knowledge walks out the door.
Tool-by-tool, operation-by-operation time study. Material prices fluctuate. Different estimators produce different numbers for the same part. Inconsistency can cost a fortune or lose jobs.
Interrupts production. Foreman's answer is a gut estimate. No real-time capacity data. Promised lead times are based on optimism, not fact.
Every quote is semi-custom. No standard template enforced. Pricing logic lives in one person's head. Easy to forget markup on outside services, packaging, or shipping.
No centralized record of what was quoted, when, or to whom. Quote lives in the Sent folder. No version control if quote is revised.
Follow-up is sporadic and depends on the owner remembering. Quotes go cold because everyone is busy. No visibility into pipeline or close rates.
No data on why jobs were lost. No feedback loop to improve pricing or response time. Estimating hours wasted with zero return.
PO arrives by email. May sit in inbox before production knows about it. No automatic trigger to start procurement or scheduling.
Re-keying data from the quote into a different system. Transcription errors. Fields left blank because the ERP requires info nobody captured during quoting.
Paper-based. If drawing revision changes after printing, floor may be working from outdated specs. Job travelers get lost, stained, or illegible.
Material specs from quote may differ from what production needs. Lead times for specialty alloys can blow delivery dates. No automatic link between accepted quote and material procurement.
Critical context lost in translation. Foreman may not get the full picture: special customer requirements, tight tolerances, outside processing needs. 'I told Dave about it' is the entire handoff protocol.
Scheduling is in the foreman's head or on a whiteboard. No real-time capacity view. Prioritization is by due date or who's yelling loudest, not by risk of being late.
Setup instructions may be incomplete. Operator may need to track down the foreman or owner for clarification on specs. No digital record of setup time vs run time.
5-10% rework rate on jobs with handoff errors. Rework steals capacity from planned work, blows schedules, and kills margin. Often caused by missing specs from the original handoff.
Manual creation of packing slips. Shipping info not automatically linked to the work order. Nobody notifies admin that parts shipped.
Admin may not know parts shipped until someone tells them. Invoice data must be manually reconciled against quote and PO. On a $500K/month shop, 2-3 week lag means $250K-$375K perpetually in unbilled limbo.
No automated AR aging alerts. Admin manually tracks who owes what. Strained customer relationships when follow-up is inconsistent.
Data lives in 4+ disconnected systems. Half-day scramble every month. Numbers often don't reconcile. Foreman's whiteboard data is the least reliable but most critical.
Report is stale by the time it's delivered. Leadership can't see real-time throughput. PE firms or banks want data the shop can't easily produce.