An order should be able to answer eight questions about itself.
Most plants can answer three of them, and only after the job has shipped. This page walks the order from enquiry to payment and names the question each stage has to be able to answer on demand.
Pick your role. See your slice first.
The same platform looks different from every chair. Choose yours and see what you would open on, what it fixes for you, and the modules behind it.
The margin picture across every live order
Know which jobs are making money before they ship, not after
Manufacturing is where we have the least shipped product — and we would rather say so here than discover it together in month three.
The engine exists: stage gates, costing, approvals, predictive warning and governance all run today inside ProjectX and PharmX. What does not exist yet is a packaged shopfloor product with a customer list behind it. So for manufacturing we work as a design partner — one plant, one process, a fixed scope and a defined exit — and we price it accordingly.
Talk about a design-partner engagement →Eight stages, eight questions.
None of these questions are exotic. The difficulty is that answering them today means asking three people and opening two spreadsheets — which is precisely why they get answered late, or not at all.
Is this customer worth quoting for?
Past conversion, payment behaviour and realised margin on their previous orders — before anyone spends a day on the costing.
What does this actually cost us today?
Material at current input prices, routing and machine time, tooling, and a realistic allowance for scrap — not last year's standard cost.
Are we above the floor?
The margin floor is applied at the quote, and going below it needs a signature from someone who owns the number.
Can we commit this date?
The promise is checked against committed load and material lead time before it is given, rather than after the customer has planned around it.
What does this displace?
Taking the order means something else moves. Making that visible is the difference between a plan and a wish.
Is this job still making money?
Actual material, labour, scrap and rework posting against the work order — so a drifting job is visible while it is still open.
Will this be on time, and if not, when did we know?
Delivery risk built from WIP movement, vendor commitments and manpower — the warning matters more than the eventual report.
What did we actually earn?
Realised margin against quoted margin, with the difference attributed to a cause you can act on next time.
The cost build-up, held as data rather than as a formula in a cell.
Almost every MSME we speak to has one person whose spreadsheet is the costing system. It usually works — until that person is on leave, or input prices move, or the customer asks why the same part costs differently this quarter.
Holding these lines as structured data is what makes a quote reproducible, a margin explainable and a price revision a five-minute job.
We read from what the plant already runs.
MSMEs rarely have a clean data landscape, and telling you to fix that first would be a way of never starting. We connect to whatever exists and capture directly where nothing does.
| Source | What we take from it |
|---|---|
| Tally or SAP | Item master, purchase rates, sales, receivables |
| MES or machine logs | Run time, downtime, output per shift |
| Excel costing sheets | The existing logic, converted into structured rules |
| Purchase records | Vendor lead time, on-time performance, price drift |
| Direct capture | Scrap, rework and WIP movement where no system exists |
One plant, one process, a fixed exit.
This is deliberately small. If it does not earn its place in the first quarter, the right outcome is that you stop — and we would rather structure for that honestly than sell a roadmap.
One process and its data
Usually costing and quoting, sometimes delivery risk. Whichever one currently costs you the most sleep.
The engine and the engineers
Stage gates, costing logic, approvals and predictive warning already exist. We shape them around your process.
The starting numbers
Measured from your records before anything is built, so the eventual claim is a delta rather than an assertion.
A defined exit
Fixed scope, fixed price, and the right to stop at the end of it with what has been built already in your hands.
Bring one part number and its costing sheet.
That is enough for a first conversation. We will rebuild the costing as structured data on the call and you will see immediately whether this is worth continuing.