Which opportunities deserve our expertise?
Read the package, identify gaps and assess manufacturing fit early, so your experts can focus on the work your company should pursue.
FOR SUPPLIERS · ESTIMATING, ENGINEERING & SALES
Bid every RFQ you should.
With confidence.
Assess more opportunities with the expertise you already have. LevelPlane connects requirements, factory fit, outside supply and cost so your team can prepare reliable quotes and approve the commitment.
Explore the productTHE DECISIONS YOUR TEAM FACES
Can we quote it with confidence?
Bring the production route, outside work, tooling and cost into one review before your team sets margin and approves the offer.
Can we respond when the request changes?
Revisit the affected assumptions and keep approved knowledge available for the next revision and the next relevant RFQ.
ILLUSTRATIVE WORKING RECORD
What your offer review contains
Manufacturing route
1,100 t press · two cavities · 3-axis machining
Review the third setup, fixture and added inspection for the plant route.
Tooling recovery
Program life still to be confirmed
Agree amortisation quantity before committing the tooling cost per part.
Rate inclusions
Overhead included in conversion
Check labor and energy inclusions too, so costs are not counted twice.
Customer revision
Quantity, material or drawing changes
Review the affected route, cost, external dependencies and delivery terms.
Housing figures follow the visual whitepaper. These records illustrate how a review is structured; they are not customer results or an approved offer.
How the work comes together.
Explore the workflow and the records it produces. Procurement is our current focus; downstream quality and supply coordination are planned expansion. Agree included stages, supported processes and approval owners before activation.
Explore the detailed workflow
01 / 08
Qualify the incoming RFQ
Your inputs
Customer drawings and revisions, specifications, quantities, target dates, inspection requirements and any requested quote format.
What LevelPlane works through
Read the requirements, identify the manufacturing work and organize unanswered questions. Keep explicit customer requirements distinct from inferred features or estimating assumptions.
Your team decides
Your estimator and engineering team confirm scope, missing tolerances and feasibility questions before pricing a commitment.
What you take forward
A structured requirement brief and a focused clarification request for the customer.
02 / 08
Fit the route to your plant
Your inputs
Available machines, operating envelopes, process rules, tooling, shift assumptions and approved production norms for the selected plant.
What LevelPlane works through
Map operations to the manufacturing context. For a casting, that can mean press capability, cavities, trimming, machining setups and testing. Flag missing rules instead of silently substituting a process.
Your team decides
Manufacturing engineering confirms machine fit, setups and cycle assumptions. Decide which operations stay in-house and which require a sub-supplier quote.
What you take forward
A plant-specific process plan with selected equipment, open feasibility questions and outsourced operations identified.
03 / 08
Cost the outsourced work
Your inputs
Operations outside your factory, such as heat treatment, coating or specialist machining, with specifications, quantities, required dates and sub-supplier quotations.
What LevelPlane works through
Organize the external operation requirements and compare returned offers on a consistent scope. Keep external cost, transport, turnaround and evidence requirements visible in the parent route.
Your team decides
Purchasing approves the sub-supplier and price. Engineering confirms process suitability, and operations checks the dependency before committing to the customer’s delivery date.
What you take forward
A reviewed external-operation cost and an explicit delivery dependency carried into the complete offer. Missing quotes remain open items.
04 / 08
Build and challenge the cost
Your inputs
Material rate and usage, yield, machine-hour rates, cycle and setup times, labor assumptions, tooling life, overhead and external operation quotes.
What LevelPlane works through
Calculate cost by operation and expose the drivers. Review the effects of batch size, cavities, yield or cycle time while keeping manufacturing cost separate from selling price.
Your team decides
Your estimator validates the cost basis and unresolved assumptions. Finance confirms overhead treatment; commercial owners choose margin and how to recover tooling or one-time costs.
What you take forward
An internal cost breakdown and a clear bridge from production cost to the proposed commercial offer.
05 / 08
Prepare the offer
Your inputs
The reviewed cost, quote quantities, lead-time assumptions, commercial terms, exclusions and the customer’s response requirements.
What LevelPlane works through
Organize the offer around the agreed scope. Keep technical deviations, tooling charges and unresolved dependencies visible so the customer knows what the price covers.
Your team decides
Sales approves price, validity and terms. Operations validates any capacity or delivery promise. Your team decides what cost detail to disclose to the customer.
What you take forward
A structured offer for human approval, with the internal manufacturing basis retained separately.
06 / 08
Respond to a changed request
Your inputs
A revised drawing, changed material, new quantity or delivery requirement, together with the previously reviewed route and quotation.
What LevelPlane works through
Identify the changed requirement and review the affected operations and cost inputs. Recalculate the impacted work, including tooling allocation or external operations, while preserving the previous quotation for comparison.
Your team decides
Engineering validates the technical change. Estimating reviews the revised cost, operations checks timing and sales approves the new offer and its validity.
What you take forward
A revision review showing what changed, which cost or delivery assumptions moved and what needs customer confirmation.
07 / 08
Hand over the agreed requirements
Your inputs
The approved offer, agreed drawing revision, selected route, external dependencies, inspection requirements and confirmed delivery assumptions.
What LevelPlane works through
Keep the engineering record available to quality and supply reviewers. Link outstanding questions to the operation or requirement they affect so the next team can act without reconstructing the quote.
Your team decides
Operations owns production commitments and quality owns acceptance. Agree the handoff, update method and any ERP or planning-system integration as part of the selected scope.
What you take forward
A manufacturing handoff containing the approved revision, route, unresolved conditions and named owners for the next actions.
08 / 08
Reuse approved factory knowledge
Your inputs
Confirmed machine settings, accepted cycle corrections, updated rates and the evidence behind each change.
What LevelPlane works through
Keep approved corrections in the relevant Company DNA context. Reuse a rule for matching work while preserving its plant, process, date and source boundaries.
Your team decides
The knowledge owner approves what becomes reusable. Your internal rates and plant context remain separate from a buyer’s independent reference model.
What you take forward
The next related quote starts from reviewed manufacturing knowledge, with new exceptions still brought back to your team.
LEARN FROM THE REVIEW
Catch a missed setup. Carry the correction forward.
Illustrative example: your estimator finds a missing setup. Record why it is needed, test where the correction applies and approve it before reuse.
01 · Record the reason
Keep the missed operation, revised cost and supporting evidence together.
02 · Define the scope
Identify the plant, machines and part family that need this setup.
03 · Validate related work
Check a matching part and a case that should remain unchanged.
04 · Approve and reuse
Retain the approved correction in Company DNA for matching quotes. New exceptions still need review.
PEOPLE + AI ENGINEERS
The decision stays with your team.
Agents organize evidence, work through the engineering and expose open questions. Your authorized people approve the cost basis, reusable knowledge and commercial commitment.
Your knowledge. Your context.
Your internal factory model contains the rates, constraints and estimating knowledge your team uses to make a decision. A customer-facing offer shares the agreed output; it does not require exposing every internal cost assumption.
Explore data boundariesMEASURE THE BUSINESS VALUE
RFQ response capacity
Track completed responses and total estimator hours, including setup, corrections and review.
Cost and margin visibility
Record cost gaps found before pricing. Compare the reviewed cost with the proposed selling price and agreed inclusions.
Revision turnaround
Measure the time to review a changed drawing, quantity or material and prepare the revised quotation.
Agree the baseline and acceptance criteria before the evaluation. Track win rate and realized margin as quoted work converts into orders and production. No increase is guaranteed.
Start with the work you want to improve.
Bring an RFQ, a drawing or a supplier quotation. We will discuss fit, agree the output your team needs and choose a focused evaluation.
For a should-cost evaluation, the starting plan is one process, one plant context and three parts.