DEMO — fictional range. Local brief only, NOT SENT. No personal data is collected or transmitted.
BUYING
What a quotation needs in order to be a quotation.
Most machining enquiries stall because the buyer has a part in mind and no specification on paper. This is the list worth completing before the first message.
- The part
- A drawing, or at least the features that decide it
- The datum
- Which feature everything else is measured from
- The material
- Alloy and temper, not "steel"
- The heat treatment
- And whether it happens before or after finishing
- The critical feature
- The one the assembly depends on, and how it is measured
- The quantity
- And the split, because setup cost is divided by the batch
- The inspection
- What is measured, from which reference, by whom, and when
- The route
- Where it goes and what it has to survive on the way
Why a photograph is not a specification.
A photograph sets a direction. A specification gets a quote. The gap between them is every dimension that was never written down.
The most useful sentence in an enquiry.
"The datum is the bore, and the feature we are worried about is the pocket floor relative to it." It tells the supplier where to spend attention, and it is the sentence most enquiries leave out.
Why written beats verbal.
The expensive conversations in a programme are the ones about what was agreed. A brief that exists only in a meeting leaves every disputed detail open.