Prototype order or production order: how to treat the two enquiries

An enquiry for ten pieces and an enquiry for ten thousand a year can arrive the same morning, each with a STEP file attached. Treat them as two different sales. The prototype comes from a design engineer who needs parts that fit, soon, and may change the drawing twice. The production order comes from a purchase team comparing three quotations on piece price and delivery. Quote the first as a lot and the second on cycle time. Then keep the design engineer in touch, because production is decided later, and by someone else.

Five questions that sort the enquiry

The quantity alone does not tell you which one you have. Fifty pieces for a field trial is still a prototype, and a purchase officer asking for two hundred may be starting a running part. Ask these on the first call or in your first reply.

1. Who is asking? A design, R&D or development engineer is buying a prototype. A purchase or sourcing officer, even for a small quantity, is buying the start of production.
2. Is the drawing released? A model with tolerances marked "TBD", or a drawing stamped "preliminary", will change. A released drawing with a revision letter and a signed title block will not change soon.
3. What quantity now, and what quantity a year if it goes ahead? The second number matters more. If nobody can give it, the project is early.
4. What is the date tied to? Prototype dates hang on a test, a trial build or a demo for the buyer's own customer. Production dates hang on a line schedule.
5. Who will source the production part, and when? Few of the enquiries answer it unasked. The answer tells you whether winning the prototype puts you in line for anything.

The rule: if three or more answers point to development, handle the enquiry as a prototype, whatever the quantity says. In a job shop, this sorting is most of what lead qualification means.

Quoting the prototype

Reply fast; the engineer is working to a test date. Ask what the part mates with and which faces matter. Those answers decide where your tolerances can relax and where they cannot.

Quote a lot price, not a piece price. On ten pieces, programming, setup and the first-piece check are most of the cost. A low piece rate only hides them. Put one line in writing: a drawing change after programming is re-quoted. Engineers are used to it. If the specified grade is slow to get, offer a stock material and say what it changes.

Above all, never put a production rate in a prototype quotation. If the engineer asks what volume will cost, say you will quote against the released drawing and the annual quantity. A number given now becomes the target price later, fixed before anyone has worked out the fixture or the cycle time.

Quoting the production enquiry

This buyer is a purchase team, and the quotation sits in a spreadsheet beside two others. Give a piece price at a stated quantity, with fixtures and special tools on their own lines and the inspection you include spelled out. Our post on explaining machine hours and part price to procurement covers that layout. Expect vendor registration, a plant visit and a first-article lot before any schedule.

Production enquiries move slowly through stages: quoted, sample requested, first article approved, first schedule. Give each one a stage, a next step and a date, so the quote that has sat with purchase for three weeks gets a call.

Keep the prototype engineer in touch

The gap between a prototype and the production order can run to months. Give every design engineer a row on your enquiry list with the stage marked "development" and the date of their next trial. Call after the trial, not before.

At delivery, send one page on what you would change for volume. A housing cut from billet for the trial might come from a casting at volume. A thread could be rolled instead of cut, or a feature that needs a second setup could move. The page gives the engineer something to forward. Your name is on it. Suggestions at the quotation stage are a separate habit, covered in why buyers send the same drawing to five CNC shops. Then ask: "When this goes to sourcing, will you introduce us to whoever runs it?"

Imagine: a VMC shop in Peenya, Bengaluru

Imagine a VMC shop in Peenya that gets two enquiries in one week. The figures are illustrative. A design engineer at a start-up building crop-spraying drones wants twelve aluminium motor-arm clamps for a field trial. A pump maker's purchase officer wants a cast-iron bearing housing, 6,000 a year.

The pump maker was handled well: a piece price at 6,000, the fixture on its own line, a first-article lot offered. The start-up was not. The shop priced the twelve clamps like a volume part, with setup buried. The drawing changed twice and the shop absorbed both changes. At delivery the engineer asked about volume, and the owner said "around ₹850 a piece". Months later the start-up's new purchase head sent the production enquiry to five shops with ₹850 as the target. The real cost was higher. The released part needed a dedicated fixture and anodising.

So the owner went back to the engineer first, with one page on the fixture and the anodising, and asked to meet the purchase head. The re-quote showed each line. It said plainly that ₹850 had been a guess. In this illustration the shop still won only part of the volume, because one competitor stayed lower on the anodised version. Since then, every prototype gets a lot price with a re-quote clause, and nobody at the shop names a volume rate before a released drawing exists.

When the line blurs

Some start-ups ask for prototype service at production prices on the promise of big volumes. Ask for the annual quantity in writing. If it does not come, price the job as a prototype.

And say no where it fits. A shop built for long runs on bar-fed lathes loses more than it earns when one-off prototypes break its schedule. Pass them to a toolroom you trust and ask for the volume enquiry back. A prototype shop with no room for volume should say so early, so the engineer can bring in a production partner before sourcing starts.

Add a development stage to your enquiry list

Put the five questions in your first reply, and give every prototype engineer a row marked "development" with a trial date. Then ring the engineers behind last year's prototypes. Ask where each part stands. VMC and 5-axis shops have their own pages under CNC machining and precision engineering. Before the production enquiry arrives, read how to present the first batch for approval. If both kinds of enquiry are landing on one desk and you want them sorted, tell us what you need.