Quoting Dates You Can Actually Hit

A quote is a promise made before the work exists, which makes it the single largest source of avoidable lateness in a job shop. The fix is to compute the promise the same way you will later compute the plan: by scheduling the job against capacity that is already spoken for. EDGEBIC by User Solutions does that with quote simulation, which runs the live scheduling engine against current committed load and returns the dates and the cost from one calculation.

This post covers where quote error comes from, how simulation removes most of it, the documented cost and date arithmetic, and the several things a quote still cannot guarantee. For the mechanism in detail, see quote simulation explained, and for the delivery metric it protects, on-time delivery KPI. This post sits under the EDGEBIC results guide.

Two Ways a Quote Goes Wrong

The date is wrong. A standard lead time says six weeks. The job needs nine, because the mill it routes through is already booked for the first three. Nobody discovers this until the job is on the floor, at which point it is late and irrecoverable. Every expedite spent on it is servicing a debt booked at order entry.

The price is wrong. The estimate used average hours, an old rate, or a routing that has drifted from what the floor actually does. The job is delivered, the customer is happy, and the margin was never there.

Both failures share a cause: the quote was computed by a different method than the schedule. One method used lead time offsets and standard costs; the other used finite capacity and real routings. When two methods disagree, the floor obeys the second one.

The Mechanism: Quote With the Engine, Not Around It

EDGEBIC's quote simulation creates a temporary order from the product, the quantity, and the direction you choose, then schedules it through the same finite capacity engine that plans production, against the load already committed. What comes back is a simulated start date, a simulated finish, total hours by work center, and a cost built from those hours.

Three consequences follow, and they are the whole value:

• The date respects other people's jobs. A quote for August cannot be optimistic about a machine that is full in August.
• The cost is derived, not estimated. It is the routing's hours multiplied by each work center's rate, plus material.
• Nothing changes between promising and planning. When the quote converts to an order, the live schedule reproduces the simulated dates because the calculation did not change.

The Documented Arithmetic

The worked example: Widget A, 200 pieces, a two-step routing.

Estimated labor cost    = $88,000 + $12,000 = $100,000
Estimated material cost = $2,400
Estimated total cost    = $102,400
Unit price at 25% markup = ($102,400 x 1.25) / 200 = $640.00
Total price             = $128,000
Estimated margin        ≈ 20%

And the dates, from the same run: simulated start June 16, simulated finish August 22, an estimated lead time of 67 days and 2,000 total hours. The customer wanted delivery by September 15, so the answer is yes, with three weeks of room, and the planner can see exactly where that room comes from.

Read the labor line again, because it is where quoting discipline actually lives. That $100,000 is 2,000 hours of routing time priced at real work center rates. If the routing says eight hours per unit and the floor takes nine, the quote is $11,000 light before anyone argues about markup. No pricing policy catches that; only comparing routings to actuals does.

Answering "Can You Make It By the 15th?"

Forward simulation answers "start now, finish when?". Customers usually ask the other question.

For that, quote backward. A backward-scheduled quote right-aligns the whole job so its last operation ends at or before the requested date, using the earliest possible start as a floor. Two outcomes, both useful:

• It fits. You have a confirmed date, and you also know the latest responsible start, which is the material release date.
• It does not fit. The simulation falls back to forward and reports when the job would genuinely finish, along with how many days late that is against the requested date.

The second outcome is the valuable one. Instead of an optimistic yes that becomes an apology in six weeks, sales gets a specific alternative to offer: this date, or this date at a premium if you authorize overtime, or this date if we split the order.

That last option has its own mechanism. What-if scenarios let you simulate the same quote against modified conditions and compare the results side by side before anything is committed.

From Quote to Order Without a Retype

Accuracy is also lost in transcription. A quote calculated carefully in one place and re-entered by hand into another arrives with a different quantity, a different date, or a stale price.

EDGEBIC converts an accepted quote into a manufacturing order without a second keying, carrying the simulated schedule with it, so the order that lands in the plan is the order that was priced. The quote-to-ship walkthrough traces the full path. The practical benefit is small per quote and large per year: nobody argues about which version of the numbers is real.

Closing the Loop on Accuracy

Quote accuracy is measurable, and most shops never measure it. Three comparisons, all available from data the system already holds:

1. Quoted finish versus actual finish, per completed order. This is your date accuracy, and it tells you whether to fix quoting or fix execution.
2. Quoted hours versus logged hours, per work center. This is your routing accuracy. The plan-versus-actual variance view in the utilization report gives it directly.
3. Quoted cost versus actual cost, per order. The dashboard's cost variance strip tracks this over a rolling window: in the documented example, five completed orders show a combined variance of +5.4% against estimate, with two specific days carrying nearly all of it.

That third number is the one to watch, because a plus figure is margin that was quoted and not delivered. When it concentrates on particular days or products, you have a routing to fix rather than a pricing policy to argue about.

Pricing the Options, Not Just the Job

The most useful quote is often not one date and one price but two or three, each with its consequence attached.

Scenario comparison supports that directly. Simulate the same job under different conditions (standard routing, an alternate work center on the constrained step, an authorized second shift) and read the results side by side: lead time, cost, and margin per option. Sales then presents a choice rather than a take-it-or-leave-it date, and the customer who needs it faster is quoted the premium that speed actually costs rather than a number somebody invented under pressure.

That framing changes the internal conversation as well. When the expedited option is priced from the same routing arithmetic as the standard one, the difference between them is a defensible number rather than an argument between sales and operations. See how to build and compare scenarios for the mechanics, and note the same honesty limit applies to every option on the sheet: each is a simulation against the capacity committed at the moment it ran.

What the Software Cannot Do Alone

It cannot reserve the capacity it simulated. A quote is a snapshot against current commitments, and it does not hold a slot. Two quotes simulated Monday for the same weeks are both valid Monday and compete on Friday. Re-simulate before converting anything that has been sitting, especially on a constrained resource.

It cannot know what you will sell next week. Every simulated date assumes today's order book. New work arriving between quote and acceptance changes the answer, which is an argument for quote validity windows rather than for distrusting the simulation.

It cannot correct your rates. Work center hourly rates and product unit costs are inputs. A quote computed with a rate set three years ago is arithmetically perfect and commercially wrong.

It cannot fix a drifted routing. This is the big one. Every hour in the cost table comes from the routing, so a routing that no longer matches the floor produces a wrong price and a wrong date simultaneously. Compare against logged actuals on a rotating basis rather than waiting for a bad quarter to prompt it.

It cannot make a commercial decision. Simulation says the job finishes August 22 and the customer wants August 1. Whether to decline, negotiate, authorize overtime, or subcontract is a business call. The software's contribution is that you are making it in June instead of discovering it in August.

Want to test your quoting against reality? Bring ten quotes and how those jobs actually ran to a demo, and we will simulate them against the capacity you had at the time.