BensonsCNC Slash Time to Quote by 83% with AMFG

Background

A family owned shop based in Iowa, BensonsCNC built its reputation on delivering custom work fast, but with care. Equipped with 3- and 5-axis mills, CNC lathes, and 3D printers, their tight knit team tackles complex parts across carbon steel, aluminum, and plastics.

Challenge 

Before adopting AMFG, BensonsCNC used spreadsheets to estimate and quote, trading off time on the shop floor for the potential of new jobs. While similar parts offered a rough baseline, the process relied heavily on guesswork, leaving them questioning pricing consistency and accuracy. To calculate a quote they felt confident in felt like a manual multi step nightmare: 

• Manually hunting down the size and cost of material
• Making an educated guess on machine set up and cycle times 
• Lightly programming parts on CAM just to validate time estimates 

Productivity was hitting capacity. Trevor and his team spent up to three hours just to generate 5 quotes. 

“It's just a lot of time consuming finding the basics. The material size, cost of the material, and then just kind of giving an educated guess on machining,” shared Trevor Benson. 

As a smaller shop, their time was far too valuable to be tied up in estimating and quoting and time spent second guessing a spreadsheet was even more time stolen from the shop floor. BensonsCNC knew they needed a new way to quote, one that was faster, more consistent and accurate to unlock capacity and boost output. 

Solution

To handle their growing workload, BensonsCNC implemented AMFG’s Estimating & Quoting software. Designed for high mix, low volume manufacturers, AMFG automatically pulls specifications and requirements and analyses deep geometries to calculate time and cost estimates. 

Now, Trevor easily plugs in RFQs into AMFG to generate accurate estimates with ready to send PDF quotes. 

“My time is very valuable, and I don’t want to spend a ton of it just quoting,” Trevor explains as one of the main reasons for implementing AMFG. “I definitely feel like I have a time advantage.” 

BensonsCNC had already been on a natural progression of growth, but AMFG had empowered them to turnaround quotes faster to keep up. Switching to AMFG’s quoting software has also helped with centralizing and storing past quotes, allowing them to also use it as a platform for them to be able to find past work that they had quoted to reference. 

“I definitely win more jobs because of AMFG” Trevor shared, as he now spends the freed up time focusing on machining the work they won or looking for even more work.  

Results 

With AMFG in place, BensonsCNC has been able to see the following business impact:

• Efficiency gains
  Quoting 5 parts now takes 20 to 30 minutes, down from 2 to 3 hours. “I spend significantly less time bidding double or triple what I used to,” said Trevor, illustrating how much more work they were able to bid for. 
• Improved accuracy and consistency
  AMFG’s geometric analysis creates a reliable starting point for estimates, reducing the need for time consuming manual adjustments and light programming, as well as the ability to reference past quotes to make sure it is consistent. 
• Customer speed advantage
  ‍“I have definitely gotten positive feedback on how quick I am to get an RFQ back,” BensonsCNC is able to win more work and has improved the customer experience by returning quotes in minutes to impress customers and differentiate themselves from the competitors, providing them with a speed advantage.