How Do Mold Makers Quote For Their Projects?

The concerns with most  mold makers is not only getting accurate costs to develop reasonable quotes, but also doing it in a very timely manner as the time allowed for this is usually insufficient. I’m familiar with the formulas presented here and I applaud anyone that can figure out how to put it all together to be able to quote with it. It takes an incredible amount of very valuable time to even consider going this route, providing the program that is using these algorithms has been put together properly.

Most mold makers or plastic mold manufacturer China, in my experience however, will not use a system using all of this for several reasons:
The amount of time to input all the variables – if they are even able to quantify them in the first place. They won’t trust the numbers coming out as they won’t feel they have any control over their ‘gut feeling’ numbers or the numbers they expect from past experience.

Scheduling will throw off so many of the variables of such an intensive system as jobs run late, the changing of priorities, incurring engineering changes, planned machine availability may change, outsourcing may be required at higher costs, etc. All these can throw the original calculations out considerably – but that can also be true of any system used. Planning is just as hard as quoting! The cost of such an in depth system would typically be out of the reach for consideration by most mold makers.

Based on my experience working with companies worldwide, most mold makerwant a simplified system as much as possible that they can rely on. If the numbers produced for an experienced estimator don’t pass that ‘gut feeling’ number they are thinking of when they first look at a part, then there won’t be any trust in what the system produces. Past experience is crucial and having past history that is readily available for comparisons to back up numbers generated for similar tools will go a long way in having toolmakers trust the system. Systems using templates can minimise the timerequired to quote and remove all the redundancies typically found in most home-made Excel based quote systems. Systems that can also generate tool layouts and material lists, provide detailed quotes as necessary and be adaptable for use with a company ERP system while being flexible enough to be used by a wide variety of mold makers.

More than anything, it must not be difficult & time consuming to setup, learn and use. Mold makers or Plastic mold makers in China just don’t have time enough (or won’t take the time) to learn a complicated new software requiring lots of inputs. They can certainly be very good and accurate IF they are setup properly, but unfortunately that IF for amount of time to setup can quickly derail the implementation of most quoting software products introduced in the past.