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AI for custom parts quote preparation
Short answer
Before a quote for custom-made parts, an AI agent combines the CRM enquiry, the drawing, the client's emails and the process engineer's notes into a scope for costing: what the quote covers, what is agreed and what to ask the client. It adds no tolerances or materials of its own. The agent costs from €3,000 net at Syntalith and, with 250 parts enquiries a month at 20 minutes each, pays back in 1.5 months.
How we workDetails ↓
- 01Call30 minutes with an engineer, free
- 02PrototypeA working system on your process and data, free
- 03ImplementationTarget and fixed price in the contract; 50% at signing
- 04Acceptance50% once the agreed target is met
- net per agent for one process, build paid once
- from €3,000
- from signing the contract to acceptance
- 6–16 weeks
- free prototype on your cases
- €0
We belong to the OpenAI and Anthropic partner programmes and learn through their official courses. What this means ↓
Author: Syntalith · 3 min read
Statistics
Make-to-order manufacturing and AI: statistics 2026
1.5 mo.
payback of a €3,000 agent with 250 parts enquiries a month: €2,908 of work today, €881 with checking and the model. Scenario.
17.3%
According to Eurostat (2025), 17.3% of EU manufacturing enterprises with at least 10 employees used AI.
Source: Eurostat, Artificial intelligence by NACE Rev. 2 activity (isoc_eb_ain2) (2025) ↗
90%
According to the European Commission (2026), 90% of companies that use AI say people take the decisions, and 2% of decisions are fully automated.
Source: European Commission, Flash Eurobarometer on AI and algorithmic management (2026) ↗
−87%
According to Anthropic (2025), AI cuts the time of a task on invoices, memos and other documents by an estimated 87%.
Source: Anthropic, Estimating AI productivity gains (2025) ↗
14–56%
According to Anthropic (2025), controlled trials found smaller time savings, from 14% to 56%.
Source: Anthropic, Estimating AI productivity gains (2025) ↗
Figures checked: 22 October 2026
Annual demand and the first batch
A client sends a drawing of a part and writes about annual demand of a thousand units. In a later email they add that they first want to order a trial batch, without giving its size. The process engineer asks for this to be settled, because the cost of setting up production spreads differently over 50 units and over 1,000. The estimator opens the drawing, goes back to the salesperson with a question about the batch, and the client's answer sits in another thread.
The agent sets both messages beside the engineer's note and proposes a question for the salesperson about the number of parts in the first batch and the scope of the quote the client expects now. The salesperson checks and sends it. When the client replies, the estimator gets a note with the current scope of the quote, the arrangements and links to the sources. If the process engineer needs to discuss a requirement in the drawing, they say what the question concerns, and the agent attaches it to the conversation.
- 01Enquirythe drawing and the description from the CRM
- 02Arrangementsthe client's emails about quantity, batch and date
- 03Notesthe process engineer's questions about the drawing and the process
- 04Gapsa question to the client through the salesperson
- 05Costingthe estimator gets the current scope with sources
What it costs and when it pays back
- Today
- 250 parts enquiries × 20 min = 83.3 h (€2,908)
- With the system, a person checks the output in 30% of the time
- €873
- Model, 2 calls per case, Claude Sonnet 5.5
- €8
- Cost of one case
- €11.63 today, €3.52 with the system
- Saving
- €2,028 a month
Payback of €3,000
1.5 months
The volume, the time and the checking share are the scenario's assumptions. €34.90 an hour is the EU average hourly labour cost for 2025 according to Eurostat. Model: 6,000 input and 600 output tokens per call at Anthropic's rates, converted at the ECB rate of 1.1205 USD per euro on 22 October 2026.
The count covers the work around a case: searching, reading, writing and passing things on. What remains is the time to check the output, 30% of today's work in the scenario. Before the quote we measure both times on 20 to 100 cases the team has already handled, in a €0 test that takes 5 working days.
Check how your current system handles quotes
Dynamics 365 Sales handles draft quotes and their revisions: an activated quote is read-only, and a revision creates a new draft. If the costing data reaches the system in a structured form, configuring it is enough. An agent makes sense when the data is created in correspondence and the salesperson keeps moving it between the inbox and a task for the process engineer. This is a different scope from answers in a tender, where the team prepares clarifications for the buyer.
The client fills in an enquiry form with quantities
the form and the quoting system
configuration
A few enquiries a month
the salesperson gathers the data by hand
no build
Hundreds of enquiries, data in emails and drawings
an agent that prepares the scope for costing
from €3,000
Where to start
The first scope covers one type of enquiry. Your team names the materials and the people who assess technical questions, and on a finished case we look at the note and the draft contact with the client. We build this as part of AI agents. For the free process review, a description of one case from recent weeks and the tools it ran through is enough. You do not need to send confidential documents, and you get a written plan within 2 working days.
Worked example · Scenario
How we count the payback: quoting in manufacturing
We run the same count for your enquiries in the free process review.
€2,094
a month for pricing 60 enquiries by hand
Payback: 1.7 mo.
60 minutes to price an enquiry with a drawing and checking in 15% of the old time are our assumptions. €34.90 an hour is the EU average hourly labour cost for 2025 according to Eurostat, for companies with 10 or more employees. Model cost: Claude Sonnet 5.5, about 4,000 + 1,500 tokens per draft quote, at the ECB rate of 1.1205 USD per euro on 22 October 2026. The extra margin is a scenario: we assume that 1 in 40 enquiries quoted the same day ends in an order that a slow reply loses today, with a margin of €688. In the review we count it on your sales process.
See the full calculation →
