by Chris Anjel | Jul 13, 2026 | Capacity & Growth, Quoting & Estimating
You just closed a week where the RFQ queue never seemed to empty. Estimators worked late, spreadsheets multiplied, and the inbox kept pinging. Now the dust is settling. Most shops exhale and move on. The smart ones pause and ask: what did that chaos just tell us about...
by Chris Anjel | Jul 13, 2026 | Quoting & Estimating, Shop Operations
Most shops treat prototype quotes and production quotes as separate events. The RFQ comes in, you price the first article, the customer approves, and months later a new request lands for the production run. By then the context is gone, the estimator has moved on, and...
by Chris Anjel | Jul 13, 2026 | Materials & Pricing, Quoting & Estimating
Most shop owners start out quoting every job themselves. It makes sense early on: you know the machines, the materials, and the margins better than anyone. But as volume grows, that habit becomes a bottleneck. You end up quoting at 9 p.m., rushing through RFQs between...
by Chris Anjel | Jul 13, 2026 | Materials & Pricing, Quoting & Estimating
Every digital manufacturer knows the drill: a customer sends an RFQ for a machined part, but the real work doesn’t stop at the mill. Heat treatment, anodizing, CMM inspection, thread inserts, and sub-assembly all live downstream. If you quote them as separate...
by Chris Anjel | Jul 13, 2026 | Quoting & Estimating, Shop Operations
A customer sends an RFQ. You start quoting. Halfway through, they email a revised STEP file — “small tweak, same part.” Now your nest is wrong, your cycle time is off, and your material calc is trash.Mid-quote revisions are normal in digital manufacturing....
