Your Cost Estimating Agent Quotes Every RFQ on Today's Material Prices
What it takes off your plate
The AgentWorks Cost Estimating Agent builds each quote from current material prices, measured cycle times and overhead by work center, then checks the quote against the job cost once the order ships, so your estimator stops rebuilding spreadsheets and spends the day with the buyers and customer accounts that send you RFQs.
Here is quoting in a lot of job shops, in the owner's words: "An RFQ comes in from a good customer. My estimator opens a spreadsheet from a similar job, guesses the cycle time, uses whatever steel price was in there last, and puts the same overhead rate on every machine. The quote looks fine. We win the job, and when the actual costs come in the margin is gone. Nobody goes back to find out why, so the next quote has the same mistake in it." The cost is margin lost on work you won, and work you lost because you quoted high on the wrong machine.
What the Cost Estimating Agent does, step by step
The Cost Estimating Agent starts with the conversations that make a quote complete, then does the costing behind it.
- It acknowledges the RFQ. When an RFQ arrives, it replies to the buyer to confirm receipt and the date your quote will go out.
- It chases what is missing. If the drawing revision, material spec, quantity breaks or delivery date is missing, it emails the buyer to ask, and follows up until the answer is in.
- It confirms material prices. It pulls current pricing from your purchase history. Where the last purchase is old, it asks the supplier contact for a current price and records the reply.
- It builds the cost. It applies measured cycle times by work center from your shop floor records, allocates overhead by the resources each operation uses, and adds material, outside processing and freight.
- It drafts the quote. It prepares the quote in your format, with the assumptions listed, for the estimator to review and send.
- It follows up. After the quote goes out, it checks in with the buyer on the date the estimator sets, and records a win, a loss or the reason given.
- It closes the loop. When the order ships, it compares quoted cost to actual job cost by operation and flags where material, cycle time or overhead was off.
It works in your ERP, your job costing and your email. The agent applies the rates and margins your owner and estimator set; it does not set prices on its own.
Where the work is recorded
Every RFQ acknowledgment, question to the buyer and follow-up is logged on the customer account and the contact in your CRM, with the quote attached. When a buyer calls about a quote, whoever picks up sees exactly what was asked, what was answered and where it stands.
The costing lives in the ERP: the quote with its material prices, cycle times and overhead, the order it became, and the quote-versus-actual comparison after shipping. The next morning the estimator sees which RFQs are waiting on the buyer, which quotes are ready to review, which follow-ups are due, and which shipped jobs came in over or under quote and on which operation. An agent that could not record its results would be a chatbot. This one leaves a costing history the next quote can learn from.
What your people do instead
Your estimator talks to buyers about the part, the tolerances and the delivery, and reviews quotes instead of assembling them. Your owner spends time with the key customer accounts and decides which work to chase, with real margins in front of them. Your production team gets orders that were quoted on cycle times the floor actually runs.
Judgment stays with people. Whether to take a job at a thin margin to keep a customer, or to walk away from work that ties up a bottleneck machine, is the owner's call. The Cost Estimating Agent puts the numbers behind that call on the table and keeps the RFQs, follow-ups and records moving.
Accurate cycle times start on the shop floor. See how a shop floor data collection agent counts every part as it runs, and how manufacturers keep promise dates when every order is checked first.
One next step
Find out whether quoting is the workflow to hand over first. The free Manufacturing Industry Assessment shows which workflow an agent should take first in your plant. To see every agent built for manufacturers, including the AgentWorks Cost Estimating Agent, visit the Manufacturing industry page.
See where the Cost Estimating Agent would start in your manufacturing business.
I'm Diane, the Manufacturing ambassador here. The free Industry Assessment reads your website and asks how calls, follow-ups and records happen today, then shows the first workflow worth handing to an agent like this one — and what your team gets back. Leave your email and I'll send the link.
Diane replies from manufacturing@agentworksstudio.com. One email with the link — no list, no drip, unless you ask for the weekly letter. Or go straight there →