Opening a request to quote without retyping the title block
Unpacking the archive, reading part number and revision off the drawing, then the material and the quantity breaks, and creating the quote record.
AI automation for job shops and make-to-order manufacturers
The quote was built against one revision and the drawing in the operator hand is another, which is the defect this sector is built around.
A request to quote arrives as an archive of geometry files and drawings, or as a line in a customer portal, or as a scan. An estimator opens each one, decomposes the part into operations mentally, estimates setup and run times, and emails suppliers for material pricing before typing a number into a spreadsheet.
The traveller that follows is usually paper, and the paper is authoritative. Sign-offs, red-pen deviations and instructions to speak to a specific person before an operation exist only on that sheet. Nothing digital knows about them, and if the folder is at the wrong machine the job is invisible.
Traceability breaks at physical handling rather than in software. Material is cut and the remnant returns to the rack without its heat identifier attached. Months later a job needs a certificate tying material to a specific melt, and nobody can prove which one that remnant came from.
What this work runs through
- JobBOSS2
- Epicor Kinetic
- Paperless Parts
- MachineMetrics
- Excel
- EDI over a VAN
- Request to quote, arriving as geometry plus drawings
- Traveller or router, which is usually paper and usually the master
- Bill of materials and routing, both carrying revision levels
- Material test report tying a batch to certified properties
- First article inspection package, one row per drawing characteristic
- Quoting and estimating
- Documents and records
- Compliance and audit
- Scheduling and dispatch
- Recurring reporting
The specific things that go wrong here
The quote and the shop floor disagree about revision
An engineering change moves the part while a traveller printed weeks ago still carries the earlier drawing. The operator machines to the print in hand. It is a document control failure rather than a skill failure.
Estimated against actual never closes
Job costing exists in every one of these systems, but when operators write times in pen and somebody keys them in later, the comparison is fiction. The next quote for the same part then repeats the same wrong assumption.
Machine monitoring can observe but not command
The common shop-floor protocol is read only by design. You can watch a machine, not instruct it. Older controls predate it entirely and need sensors that infer state rather than report it.
Outside processing is a hole in the schedule
The job leaves the building for heat treat or plating and the system continues to show it sitting at an operation for the whole two weeks.
What we would automate, and when we would not
Assembling a certificate package at shipment
Collecting material certificates for every heat used, outside process certificates, and the inspection record, then checking that the heat identifiers on the certificates match what was actually pulled from stock.
Answering where an order is without walking the floor
A customer asks for status and somebody finds the traveller to read the last signed operation.
Reading the quality clauses off an incoming purchase order
A purchase order arrives carrying clause codes and little else.
Numbering every drawing characteristic for a first article report
Characteristic accountability is the rule that makes this tedious.
Filing a mill test report against the heat received
Bars arrive on Tuesday and the certificates arrive on Friday, as a PDF attached to a mail from the service centre, often covering several heats in one file.
Finding jobs running to a superseded drawing revision
The traveller in the hand of the operator carries the revision printed at release.
Closing the gap between estimated hours and actual hours
Job costing only works if the times going in are real.
Turning a rejected part into a routed nonconformance record
A part gets red tagged at the machine and put in the crib, and the record that should follow it gets written from memory the next morning.
Attaching a reason to every unexplained machine stop
The protocol that most controls speak is read only by design, which means it can report that the spindle stopped at eleven and not why.
Chasing parts sitting at the plater or heat treater
Parts leave on a Thursday with a purchase order for the service and a packing list, and the system keeps showing the operation as open until somebody receives them back.
Working a supplier corrective action request to closure
A corrective action request lands in a customer portal or as a form attached to a mail, with two clocks on it.
Checking a production part approval package before submitting
Approval packages come back for mismatch rather than for bad parts.
Testing a shipment notice before the customer scans it
The 856 fails at the receiving dock, not in the mailbox.
Catching gauges that pass their calibration due date
A micrometer in a drawer at machine four carries a sticker and a line on a spreadsheet, and the two agree until somebody borrows it.
Watching outside processor approvals expire before the order ships
Approval has a scope and an end date, and both are checkable on the accreditation database rather than on the copy of a certificate in your supplier folder.
Billing the shipments that never became an invoice
Money leaves through the dock door.
Quality certification is the constraint that shapes everything here. Document control requires that the current version is available where it is used, that changes are tracked, and that records are retained, so any automation which creates, moves or supersedes a controlled document has to preserve version history and an audit trail or it breaks the certification itself and not only the workflow. Aerospace work adds unique identification and documentation linking each item to its source material and production batch, and defence work adds export control, where technical data may not be accessible to foreign persons including through cloud storage and vendor support access. That last one decides which services may touch the files at all, and it is checked with the export control officer rather than assumed.
Related: Construction and contracting Logistics and freight. Or start from the four shapes of work instead of from an industry.