G’day from Sydney Australia!

Guy’s...I’ve been agonising over this post for some weeks now. I’m finding it difficult to word this as a genuine topic when I ultimately will be using the feedback I get for improving a commercial product. I certainly don’t want to pretend to be anything or anybody else than who I am. We are a small software developer based in Sydney Australia and we have spent a large part of the last few years developing what we believe to be the most advance quoting and estimating system for machined parts. I am also a fully qualified machinist with many years experience so I hope you guys won’t mind offering some genuine feedback.

Obviously quoting for work is something all you guys do every day, so I am sure I have come to the right place to get some good advice. Our product has enjoyed good success in our local market and in some European countries. We get a constant stream of feedback from our users however one of them said something the other day that finally pushed me to make this post... he said “the software really does work the way we in Australia expects it to”... Obviously we want our product to have a wide international appeal, so before we go any further I wanted to get it “straight from the horse’s mouth” as it were and ask some sensible questions here.

The product is aimed directly at small to medium sized shops who want to quote as accurately, consistently but as quickly and cheaply as possible. I have read many posts on the subject of quoting and certainly there are many common underlying themes’ one of which is the time it takes compared to the payback. We all know that you will not get every job you quote for and in some cases I have heard results as poor as 1 in 10. So my first question is how do you guys quote now? Please don’t think me at all condescending, but it’s been my experience that the majority of you rely on “experience” which let’s be honest amounts to not much more than an educated guess!

My second question is a little more specific, what percentage of the time, are you sent drawings...
a) On Paper
b) As a PDF attachment
c) As a Autocad drawing (DXF or DWG)
d) As a 3D model (IGES, STEP or a proprietary standard such as Solidworks or ProE etc)

And my last question (for today anyway) is, do you use a “shop rate” or do you have separate hourly rates for each of your work centres?

Once again I really want to stress that I am looking for genuine feedback here and you will have noticed that I have deliberately not mentioned either the product name or the company name as I don’t want to use this forum as a blatant way of promoting our services.

I’m also looking for ANY comments, suggestions, requests etc. That will provoke discussion on this subject. In the current economic situation, quoting is really something you should be putting a great deal of effort into getting right!

Thanks