Most shops around here quote the same way: the part file sits in the owner's inbox until he has an hour. Lone Peak Precision in Bozeman stopped doing that. A customer uploads the part, the system reads it, prices it off the shop's own rates, and emails the quote back.
We've sat in enough shop offices in Bozeman, Belgrade and Livingston to know the list. It's rarely the machines. It's the desk.
We build the piece of software your shop is missing and connect it to what you already use. No new ERP, no asking the crew to learn a new system.
A customer uploads a STEP file. The system measures it, works out stock and material removal, applies your rates and your rules, and sends the quote. Your machinist's know-how becomes the pricing rules. He stops being the bottleneck and keeps being the expert.
Purchase orders, invoices and packing slips read off the PDF and land in QuickBooks and your job list. Someone checks them. Nobody retypes them.
A plain board that shows what's quoted, in progress, waiting, done and invoiced, fed by the systems above so nobody has to update it by hand.
Find the hours. An audit, from $1,500. We spend time in your office, count where the hours go, and hand you a plan with a price on it before you spend anything else.
Build the fix. Priced per job. Our rule: it should pay for itself in about six months of the time it saves. If it won't, we tell you.
Keep it running. Your business changes, your suppliers change their forms, software updates. A flat monthly fee keeps it working and gets you a call each month to find the next thing worth fixing.
Two of us. Ben runs Lone Peak Precision, a machine shop in Bozeman, and before that built the inventory system for a Vision Aerial factory that doubled its inventory turns. Gabe is the engineer who built Lone Peak's quoting system and has spent 600+ days building tools that do busywork. We're in Bozeman. You can come see the shop.
We work with shops in Bozeman, Belgrade, Four Corners, Manhattan, Three Forks and Livingston.
No. We build on what you have, usually QuickBooks, email, a spreadsheet or two and whatever CAM you run. The new piece connects to those.
The opposite. His rules become the system's rules, and he can change them any time. He stops typing quotes and starts approving them.
Weeks, not months. Lone Peak's went from first conversation to sending real quotes in about six weeks.
The audit starts at $1,500 and is credited toward the build if you go ahead within 30 days. Builds are priced per job. We publish the rule we price by: it should pay for itself in about six months of saved hours.
That's what the monthly retainer covers. We built it, we keep it running, and you have our numbers.
Audits start at $1,500. You see what the fix costs before you pay for it.