Our FR5 packing quote now includes the guarding, fixture and training. It still assumes boxed modules arrive in perfect rows, apparently by local magic. The second quote includes presentation but leaves changeover vague. How do I get a comparison we can actually buy from?
Write down the same start and finish for both jobs. Ours once compared a robot receiving prepared parts with another proposal doing the preparation too. Or rather, we compared their prices before noticing they had priced different work.
Start is modules in the supplier's shipping boxes. Finish is loaded packing trays at the next station. First quote starts after unpacking and arranging. Second starts from the shipping boxes.
That gives you a specific gap to price. Ask the first supplier for the preparation option, but keep a manual-preparation alternative too. Automation of that bit may cost more than it saves at your volume.
First supplier will price preparation. Our supervisor reckons one person could feed two stations, but we haven't watched the whole job yet. I don't want to book half a person on optimism.
Nor should you. Include replenishing and clearing the empty shipping boxes when you watch it, not just the satisfying bit where a hand places a module in a pocket.
And get the exclusions in writing for both quotes, because a spreadsheet full of your estimates can quietly turn into a list of things everyone thinks the supplier promised.
Done. We've marked supplier price, our estimate and unknown separately. There are more unknowns than I was hoping, but at least they stopped looking like free extras.
What does the second supplier actually include under changeover? A recipe choice, a tooling swap, or someone teaching your staff how to do the whole thing?
Which module variants must the purchased cell handle? That needs to be common between the quotes before changeover scope can be compared. A price for one fixed setup does not cover an unspecified family.
Three current variants. Both suppliers have the drawings now. The second quote included the tooling changes but only one demonstration to our day shift, no night-shift training.
Priya, could your own trainer cover nights after the supplier session, or does the supplier need to deliver both? Worth costing those as explicit choices rather than leaving the second shift invisible.
Our trainer can cover it if the supplier provides a usable handover and includes recovery and changeover. We've asked for that scope. A single clean demonstration won't do the job.
Have the supplier price that exact handover, then compare your internal training hours separately; otherwise the larger training number gets blamed on whichever quote happened to admit it.
Requested. Preparation option from supplier one is back, but the training and changeover answers are still coming. No winner yet. Thanks for helping turn the argument into named bits of work.
Did the preparation option cover all three module variants from their actual shipping boxes, or only the easiest arrangement used for its demonstration?