On-Demand Manufacturing Platform

The client ran a custom fabrication business handling hundreds of orders monthly. Every order was unique — different materials, dimensions, tolerances, and delivery requirements. Their entire operation ran on spreadsheets, phone calls, and email.

The pain points were severe:

• Quote turnaround was 2-3 days — Each quote required checking material availability, calculating costs from multiple suppliers, and factoring in production capacity. All manually.
• Orders fell through cracks — With no central system, orders existed in email threads. Follow-ups were missed. Deadlines were forgotten until the customer called.
• No production visibility — The team had no real-time view of what was in production, what was pending, or what was due this week.
• Supplier management was chaos — Material pricing changed weekly. Nobody had a current view of what each supplier charged for which materials.

We built a purpose-designed web application that mirrored their actual workflow — from inquiry to delivery — with no unnecessary complexity.

• Smart quoting engine — Pre-configured material prices, markup rules, and production time estimates. Quotes that took 2-3 days now generate in under 15 minutes.
• Order pipeline — Visual Kanban-style board showing every order from quote → approved → in production → quality check → shipped. Nothing gets lost.
• Supplier dashboard — Centralized material pricing from all suppliers, with automatic alerts when prices change.
• Production scheduling — Capacity-aware scheduling that accounts for machine availability, material lead times, and delivery deadlines.
• Customer portal — Customers can submit inquiries, view quote status, and track orders without calling or emailing.

After one month in production:

• Quoting time dropped from 2-3 days to 15 minutes — a 10x improvement that directly increased close rates.
• Zero lost orders — Every inquiry is tracked from first contact to delivery.
• Full production visibility — The team knows exactly what's in progress, what's due, and where bottlenecks are forming.
• Customers stopped calling for status updates — The portal gives them real-time order tracking.

The platform paid for itself within 6 weeks through reduced labor and increased order throughput.