How Does Your Estimation Effort Match Up?

You Scored Low

Your score indicates room for improvement in your estimation practices. Enhancing these processes can help you secure more profitable business opportunities. By digitizing, standardizing, and leveraging real-time data, you can enhance accuracy, reduce variability, and minimize reliance on subjective inputs, paving the way for more confident and competitive bids.

3 Key Improvement Suggestions

1. Digitize and Analyze: Implement digital estimation tools to streamline data collection and enable advanced manipulation, leading to more precise and consistent cost projections.
   aPriori Highlight: aPriori provides real-time insights on manufacturability and cost drivers, enabling faster, more accurate quotes while reducing manual effort and inconsistencies.
2. Standardize Quoting Practices: Develop a unified quoting framework to reduce variability across estimators, ensuring consistent, accurate quotes regardless of individual experience levels.
   aPriori Highlight: aPriori analyzes equipment, processes, and factory strengths to recommend the best production methods. It provides detailed insights into costs, cycle times, capacity, and machine utilization, ensuring an efficient and cost-effective approach every time.
3. Leverage Real-Time Data: Replace opinion-based expertise with data-driven insights, reducing uncertainty and improving decision-making over time to deliver competitive and profitable bids.
   aPriori Highlight: With aPriori providing fast, accurate insights, your skilled engineers are freed from manual estimation work, allowing them to focus on machine enhancements, process innovation, and other high-impact projects.

To learn more about how you can uplift your cost estimation practices, check out our Guide to winning more profitable business.

You Scored Medium

Your score indicates that you're making solid progress toward winning more profitable business. By scaling team expertise, simplifying quoting processes, and benchmarking market performance, you can deliver accurate, attractive quotes that drive profitability.

3 Key Improvement Suggestions:

1. Scale Expertise with Efficiency: Extend your team's expertise using tools like aPriori to accelerate learning, fill knowledge gaps, and ensure consistent quoting accuracy across your organization.
   aPriori Highlight: aPriori enables the efficient batch processing of multiple parts or assemblies, allowing you to estimate costs across various manufacturing processes or part batches simultaneously.
2. Simplify Complexity: Streamline complex quoting processes and part evaluations by using tools with embedded manufacturability expertise, ensuring precise quotes that maintain profitability.
   aPriori Highlight: With a detailed breakdown of cost drivers, including material, labor, and production, aPriori empowers teams to present fair, defensible pricing. This transparency strengthens buyer relationships and limits unnecessary pricing concessions.
3. Enhance Competitiveness: Benchmark pricing against competitors and regions to identify market opportunities. Provide DFM feedback to reduce customer costs, address non-conformance risks, and make your quotes more compelling.
   aPriori Highlight: With aPriori's benchmarking, you can compare your pricing by capability or by region, allowing you to identify strengths and potential areas for improvement. This competitive insight helps you strategically position your quotes.

To learn more about how you can uplift your cost estimation practices, check out our Guide to winning more profitable business.

You Scored High

Your score indicates you're exceeding your goals and optimizing profitability, ensuring no opportunities are missed. By focusing on resource optimization, preparing for future demands, and leveraging strategic partnerships, you're setting the stage for sustained business growth and success.

3 Key Improvement Suggestions:

1. Optimize Resources and Future-Proof Operations: Analyze how investments in advanced technology can enhance speed, reduce manual effort, and increase efficiency. Prioritize strategic trade-offs to boost productivity and better support customer needs.
   aPriori Highlight: aPriori's data-driven insights quickly quantify the impact of investing in new capital equipment to address questions like will this make processes faster, reduce manual effort, or increase material efficiency.
2. Strengthen Strategic Partnerships: Foster collaborative, win-win strategies with customers, such as zero-RFQ models, to solidify relationships while driving mutual growth and innovation.
   aPriori Highlight: aPriori's accurate cost modeling system, which reflect the supplier's cost structure enables clearer understanding of cost expectations and reduced administrative tasks. Suppliers can more effectively meet client needs, leading to higher success rates in securing contracts.
3. Ensure Smooth Production with Advanced Tools: Implement tools that streamline production planning and assess part feasibility. Identify design or material challenges specific to your factory setup, preventing time wasted on unviable options.
   aPriori Highlight: aPriori identifies manufacturability issues early, preventing costly production delays. It offers actionable guidance to resolve problems before they arise and enables cost comparisons across regions, volumes, and processes—ensuring confident pricing decisions.

To learn more about how you can uplift your cost estimation practices, check out our Guide to winning more profitable business.