Thread: I get asked to design the strangest things----

Tweet

Brian, when I do a proposal for a customer that I havent worked with before, I ask the upfront question "do you want a budgetary price or a detailed proposal?" Then, I always hit them with a one or two page writeup with an estimated price so they can either tell me to continue with my pricing or to help them breathe again. I also ask the upfront question "do you need a real bid or just a third bidder?" If they only need a filler bid, I will give them the short version and some close-but-a-little-high price.

It takes me at least a week to write a 75 page propsal for an automation machine so I dont like to do it for a job that has no chance of happening. If you ask a customer if he wants a quote, he always says yes without consideration for how much time it consumes.

mike in tucson

Originally Posted by robot

Brian, when I do a proposal for a customer that I havent worked with before, I ask the upfront question "do you want a budgetary price or a detailed proposal?" Then, I always hit them with a one or two page writeup with an estimated price so they can either tell me to continue with my pricing or to help them breathe again. I also ask the upfront question "do you need a real bid or just a third bidder?" If they only need a filler bid, I will give them the short version and some close-but-a-little-high price.

It takes me at least a week to write a 75 page propsal for an automation machine so I dont like to do it for a job that has no chance of happening. If you ask a customer if he wants a quote, he always says yes without consideration for how much time it consumes.

mike in tucson

On new customers who I haven't worked with before, I just write up a 2 page "quicky" and fire it off to them. I absolutely do not believe in working for nothing!!!! If the "quicky" cost estimate scares 'em off, then I've only wasted an hour or so. If they want it more detailed than that, they are "on the clock" and pay for it.

Try the chocolate chip cookies at Subway........they are pretty good.

Brian, how does that work for you? I guess you get consulting fees or preliminary design fees up front? So if they decide against going ahead with the project you are not out the work you already performed?

Whoops, I was reading the
1st page and missed the discussions you guys were having on this subject already.

Don

Originally Posted by brianrupnow

Haven't heard back from the "cookie customer". Sometimes guys go into sticker shock when they see what an automated machine with PLC controls really costs, and I never hear from them again. If its a machine shop wanting to build a machine for a customer, then fine, they just pass the design costs on to the customer. However if its a guy who wants a machine built for his own use, and he has to eat the costs himself, quite often I put in a preliminary cost estimate, along with an estimated design cost, and they dissapear, just like magic!!!

Them guys come around here too Brian.... We call them tire kickers!!!!!!!!!

Estimating the Design and Build of a piece of Automation is not an easy thing.When I was in the business I would take high dollar pieces of equipment on a cost + basis only.After the inital design and build were completed I would have a base to work and quote from for building multiple machines of the same design.

Automation is very complicated from a design standpoint.Programming PLC's to perform a given task was a job I handed over to my son (book smart) to do.
Automation in a sense is eliminating human workers and error,sad but true.Labor cost drive automation.

Robot's play a key role in Automation but thay don't work for all applications and you have to design and build custom equipment.

It is rewarding to see a product turned out by a piece of equipment you have Designed and Built.

Estimating is not easy. In order to estimate the cost of any peice of machinery, you have to know so many things. A very good knowledge of "how things are made"---i.e. lathe, mill, electronic discharge machining, welding, fitting and all the other processes required to make a peice of equipment, and the knowledge of how long each process takes. The approximate cost of purchased items i.e. pneumatic and hydraulic cylinders, gearboxes, motors, limit switches, and power supplies. And above all, for automated machinery, a knowledge of how a programmable logic controller "thinks" for a machine to lay out all the sequential operations, based on feed back from arrays of micro switches at all the critical motion points. Hell, I don't even know exactly how I do it myself!!!! Its just based on years and years of doing it over and over again.---Taking all of this knowledge and designing a new machine to do a new job or process that never previously existed is a thing that I really can't explain either. It almost seems like a form of magic to me, and I do it every day.

Oh Boy!!!! I just got a call from the cookie dough guy!!!! He wants to give me a P.O. to design a new machine. And here I am, right in the middle of a 3 month contract designing machinery to crush and reclaim old computer monitors and CPU's. I sent him an email telling him he'll just have to wait. Damn, it always happens this way!!!!

Originally Posted by brianrupnow

Oh Boy!!!! I just got a call from the cookie dough guy!!!! He wants to give me a P.O. to design a new machine. And here I am, right in the middle of a 3 month contract designing machinery to crush and reclaim old computer monitors and CPU's. I sent him an email telling him he'll just have to wait. Damn, it always happens this way!!!!

Brian - it's called feast or famine. And in the current recessive problems we North Americans are experiencing, you seem to be not on the famine end.

Now - about cookies(more feast) - since I'm in the minority (and considered strange) when it comes to chocolate.....I hope it will do oatmeal cookies. Or sugar cookies. Or date-nut cookies.

Originally Posted by brianrupnow

Oh Boy!!!! I just got a call from the cookie dough guy!!!! He wants to give me a P.O. to design a new machine. And here I am, right in the middle of a 3 month contract designing machinery to crush and reclaim old computer monitors and CPU's. I sent him an email telling him he'll just have to wait. Damn, it always happens this way!!!!

Brian,maybe you should consider off loading some of that design south of the border,say around Austin.LOL,LOL I know of a retired guy that designed a system for cookie dough that would mix,package and label.It was later frozen awating distribution.It is now running in Lockart Tx.It operated with PLC technology.

Originally Posted by Don Dalton

Brian,maybe you should consider off loading some of that design south of the border,say around Austin.LOL,LOL I know of a retired guy that designed a system for cookie dough that would mix,package and label.It was later frozen awating distribution.It is now running in Lockart Tx.It operated with PLC technology.

Well Don, I never rush to give work away, but at least now I know who's brain I can pick if I get hung up while working on the cooky dough machine!!!