Lost enquiries
Your capacity was free. The enquiry was in a pocket.
In job work the enquiry is perishable: the customer needs machine time this week, so a reply on Thursday is worth nothing. Logging every enquiry against available capacity lets you answer the same day and fill the gaps that would otherwise run empty.
In short
In job work the enquiry is perishable: the customer needs machine time this week, so a reply on Thursday is worth nothing. Logging every enquiry against available capacity lets you answer the same day and fill the gaps that would otherwise run empty.
The cost
What the gap takes every month.
10 to 20%
Machine hours that run empty in a month
Not for lack of enquiries, but because enquiries and capacity were never in the same view.
Same day
The window for most job work decisions
Customers with a stalled line do not wait for a formal quotation.
One ordinary week
How it actually happens.
A customer needs turning work for 400 components starting Wednesday. They call your supervisor, who is on the floor and says he will check and call back.
He checks on Thursday. By then another shop has taken the job, and your machine sits idle on Friday for exactly the hours you could have sold.
If the enquiry is logged at the moment of the call, with the required window and the machine group, whoever owns scheduling can answer within the hour.
The fix
Three steps, in this order.
01
Capture every enquiry in one list
Web forms, calls, trade portals and WhatsApp messages land in a single enquiry list instead of individual phones.
02
Give each enquiry an owner and a next date
Nothing sits unassigned. The owner sees it on their day list until it is acted on or closed with a reason.
03
Surface what is overdue before anything else
Managers see untouched enquiries at the top of the day, not at the end of the month.
Straight answers
What owners ask us here.
Our work is decided verbally. Does a system slow that down?
The decision stays verbal and fast. What changes is that the call is recorded in thirty seconds so it is not the only copy in one person's memory.
Can we see free capacity while answering?
The production board shows current load, so the person answering knows what can genuinely be promised.
How do repeat job work customers fit?
Their past jobs, rates and cycle times sit on the account, so a repeat enquiry is quoted from history rather than from scratch.
Questions people ask
Straight answers, no sales talk.
System of Marketing & Sales
Put enquiry to dispatch on one governed line.
Tell us how your plant sells today. We'll show you where the line breaks and what it takes to close it.