What Are The 2 Most Critical Inputs Into Your Quoting Process?

Did you mean coat?

I agree with what you boiled it down to of:

Material, Labor and Time.

I believe that would be covered under the process cost data.

But as a small business owner, we used that criteria. But I like to add, as a business owner, I have always pushed the limits of our process capability to basically get the business to the next competitive level. And to do this, it seems the bigger the push the larger the risk, and the risk is exponential. That is where one has to be careful not to exceed your resources.

As far as subcontracting, I was a control freak to put it mildly, because I was always pushing. It took me some time to figure that out that it can work for you, and that definitely reduces your risks, what does increase is ownership of control. And by control is finding a contractor that does what he says he's going to do. Which you touch off of with delivery time.

Now your into a little project management with the three things and that is:

• Quality
• Budget
• Schedule

Now Pick 2.

And the article also touches off it, and that you have to have your finger on the pulse.

Good article!

Most of the time people are leaning towards budget and schedule. When they do that quality starts to suffer.

We are turning more over to sub-contracting than doing things in house because everything is so rush, rush that we make a lot of mistakes and incur a great deal in rework costs, so to off-set the rework costs, if the vendor makes the part incorrectly, we can reject the part and they absorb the rework cost. So there is still incentive in doing it right the first time.

The vendors we use are much better at reducing errors because they have laser or waterjet cutters and we don't, their press breaks are CNC and ours is now but it didn't use to be. They pay their employees better than we pay ours, so the professionalism goes up. Wow, so many variables.

Make or buy is a great discussion on it's own, And one I will be writing about shortly. There are a lot of variables.

Milo

Make or buy,

There are a few analyses that one has to run.

Not Surprisingly, alot is about project management, of which I have seen this career becoming in high demand.

In project management, the rule of thumb when there is a change order, You pick 2 of the three.

i.e.

You pick

• Pick: Cost and schedule
• your quality suffers

or

• Pick: Schedule and quality
• your costs balloon

Or

• pick: cost and quality
• Your schedule suffers

And if its poorly managed, everything suffers.

I had some clients that were time and materials, you don't see that much. But I do have to give an estimate, and sometimes "Not to Exceed".