How contract manufacturers can cut wire harness quoting from a week to just 30 minutes
What’s the real bottleneck in wire harness manufacturing? It’s not the assembly, but the quoting process—where manufacturers scramble to provide accurate estimates amidst a sea of technical details, ambiguous information, and supply chain issues. Have you ever wondered how a single misstep in quoting can ripple across the entire project? You’re about to find out why quoting for wire harness projects is a critical yet often overlooked part of the contract manufacturing process.
In this article, we’ll walk through the key stages of the quoting process, where contract manufacturers hit the most common roadblocks, and how modern solutions can alleviate these challenges.
Table of contents:
Initial assessment: Setting the stage (1-2 days)
The quoting process starts with an initial assessment of the technical documents provided by the original equipment manufacturer (OEM). This phase typically takes one to two days and is crucial in establishing the framework for the entire quote. The problem? These documents often come riddled with incomplete or ambiguous information. Imagine trying to put together a puzzle with missing pieces—it’s a guessing game at best.
Contract manufacturers find themselves engaged in a back-and-forth communication loop with the OEM to clarify these details, a process that not only wastes time but also opens the door for misinterpretation. If the manufacturer misjudges the requirements at this early stage, it’s like building a house on shaky ground. Everything that follows could crumble.
Design recreation: From PDFs to CAD (2 days)
Next comes the design recreation phase, which can be just as time-consuming as it is critical. OEMs typically provide PDF documents, which must be converted into a CAD (computer-aided design) format. This process, taking roughly two days, is a potential minefield for discrepancies.
Even the smallest error in recreating a design can lead to reworks and delays down the line. Consider this: a misstep here could result in a component not fitting into the final product, pushing back timelines and inflating costs. For manufacturers, it’s a delicate balance between speed and accuracy—rush the design recreation, and you might pay for it later with costly fixes.
Sourcing & estimation: The longest stretch (3-4 days)
Now we hit the most time-consuming phase—sourcing and estimation, which can take three to four days. Why so long? Because contract manufacturers need to contact multiple suppliers to get quotes for each part required in the wire harness. The reality is that there’s no one-stop shop; every component comes from different places, and each supplier has its own lead times and pricing structures.
What if a component is obsolete? Manufacturers need to find suitable alternatives, which adds another layer of complexity. Negotiating prices and timelines with suppliers while simultaneously managing the clock makes this phase a logistical headache. When you consider that inaccuracies in sourcing can impact profitability, it’s easy to see why this stage often causes the most stress.
Margin analysis & internal review: The final hurdle (2 days)
With all the data in hand, the quoting process heads into the final stage—margin analysis and internal review, taking another two days. Here, manufacturers aggregate costs for materials, labor, and overhead to determine their overall project costs and potential profit margins.
Cross-departmental sign-offs are required, especially for high-value projects. Sometimes, final approval needs to come from the executive level. This phase is all about finding balance—ensuring that the quote is competitive enough to win the job, but profitable enough to justify the risk. Underquote, and you lose money. Overquote, and you lose the contract.
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Common challenges for contract manufacturers
Contract manufacturers face a range of hurdles throughout the quoting process. They might receive multiple quote requests from various OEMs at the same time, each with different timelines and urgency levels. It’s like trying to juggle flaming torches—get it right, and you’ve got a spectacle; get it wrong, and you’ve got a disaster.
The complexity of projects varies greatly as well. Some are straightforward, while others are labyrinthine, involving specialized parts that are hard to source or design requirements that are prone to misinterpretation. It’s no wonder the typical 7-10 day quoting process has only a 20% success rate.
Addressing the quoting dilemma: A way forward
So, how can contract manufacturers break free from this 7-10 day quoting cycle and its inefficiencies? Modern technology offers some compelling solutions.
Automated design tools and CAD software can drastically reduce the time needed for design recreation. Instead of manually converting OEM-provided PDFs into CAD formats, automation can handle this in a fraction of the time, eliminating human error in the process.
Integrated supply chain management systems can also streamline the sourcing and estimation phase by providing real-time access to supplier inventories, prices, and lead times. Imagine having a dashboard where all of this data is updated in real-time—suddenly, that three to four-day stretch for sourcing shrinks significantly.
Finally, contract manufacturers can optimize their internal review processes by automating margin analysis and setting predefined thresholds for approval. Instead of waiting for multiple departments to manually sign off, an automated system can flag quotes that meet the company's profitability standards, fast-tracking the process and reducing delays.
Conclusion
The traditional quoting process for wire harness projects is time-consuming, inefficient, and fraught with opportunities for error. But it doesn’t have to be. By embracing modern design tools, integrated supply chain systems, and automated internal processes, contract manufacturers can not only reduce the quoting time but also increase accuracy and success rates.
As the demands of the industry grow more complex, manufacturers must ask themselves: How long can we afford to rely on outdated quoting methods? Isn’t it time to modernize and step into a more efficient future?
About Cableteque
Cableteque streamlines the entire wire harness lifecycle for contract manufacturers and OEM's alike. Cableteque’s Predictive Interconnect Analytics (PIA) software is a cloud-based AI solution that helps increase efficiency and reduce mistakes by automating the identification of failures and creating a foolproof digital twin to transfer knowledge during the development process.
Its software also streamlines and automates the quoting, design, and sourcing processes involved in wire harness production. Cableteque focuses on reducing the time it takes for contract manufacturers to generate quotes for new projects, which typically can take days or even over a week, down to just 30 minutes.
The software allows data synchronization with multiple databases and proprietary design rule checks (DRC) to minimize costly mistakes in the early stages of product modeling and design. PIA integrates seamlessly with CAD tools and provides comprehensive feedback to help designers target “design risks” and enhance confidence in the expected outcome. Cableteque’s PIA software is an add-on tool to the designers’ CAD, and it will integrate seamlessly with numerous native CAD tools by leveraging standard outputs of design tools such as the parts list, From-To lists, and other design data and provide comprehensive feedback so that the designer can target “design risks” to minimize mistakes and enhance confidence in the expected outcome.
About Mr Arik Vrobel
For over 30 transformative years, Arik led the evolution of El-Com Systems into a pinnacle of excellence in Electric Wire Harnesses (EWH) for global enterprises. In his final 5 years, he steered El-Com to become the foremost provider of engineered harnesses for the commercial-space sector, supporting groundbreaking projects on space platforms.
Since its acquisition by Winchester Interconnect , driven by his entrepreneurial spirit, Arik founded Cableteque, a beacon of innovation offering AI-based CAD tools to enhance and validate engineering designs of EWH, inspiring the industry with his vision for impactful technological advancement.