Metal Fabrication
Quote faster. Protect job margins. Recover hours lost to paperwork.
Your estimators, project managers, and office team should not be spending half the day digging through drawings, chasing material prices, rebuilding job status reports, matching invoices to POs, or answering the same shop questions again and again.
MVP.dev builds AI automation systems for metal fabrication shops that plug into the tools you already use, including JobBOSS², E2 Shop System, Global Shop Solutions, Epicor Kinetic, ProShop ERP, M1, Fulcrum, Tekla PowerFab, SigmaNEST, ProNest, SOLIDWORKS, Autodesk Inventor, AutoCAD, Mastercam, Paperless Parts, SecturaFAB, QuickBooks, and NetSuite.
We help fabrication shops shorten RFQ response time, reduce manual admin work, tighten job visibility, and protect margin before small errors turn into expensive rework.
Production-ready in 3 to 4 weeks.
Get a Workflow Fit Assessment See the Metal Fabrication Automation DemosBuilt for shops with steady demand, but too much work trapped in manual handoffs
This is for metal fabrication companies, machine shops, structural steel fabricators, sheet metal shops, contract manufacturers, job shops, and industrial suppliers that already have the work but are losing hours to quoting, paperwork, job tracking, and manual reconciliation.
You are likely a strong fit if:
- RFQs sit too long because drawings, specs, pricing, and past jobs have to be gathered by hand
- Estimators are buried in admin work instead of pricing profitable jobs
- Job status depends on calls, whiteboards, spreadsheets, or walking the floor
- Material invoices, POs, receivers, and job costs are reconciled manually
- Quality documents, certs, procedures, and customer requirements are hard to find quickly
- You use JobBOSS², E2, Global Shop Solutions, Epicor, ProShop, Tekla PowerFab, or a similar fabrication stack
If your shop is busy but still depends on manual follow-up, spreadsheet reporting, tribal knowledge, and office staff chasing details, there is almost certainly margin and capacity leaking out of the workflow.
The fastest wins we usually find
RFQs that move before the buyer goes quiet
Many fabrication shops do not lose jobs because they cannot do the work. They lose jobs because the quote took too long to assemble.
We build RFQ intake and quote-prep workflows that read request emails, drawings, part notes, customer requirements, and prior job history, then prepare an estimator-ready package with missing items, likely materials, similar past work, and a draft response.
The goal is simple:
- New RFQs captured and organized quickly
- Drawings, specs, and customer notes summarized
- Similar past jobs surfaced for reference
- Missing details flagged before estimating starts
For many shops, this can cut RFQ prep work by 30 to 50 percent and help estimators respond same-day on simpler jobs instead of letting requests wait 2 or 3 days.
See the RFQ Prep Demo →Material and supplier checks before margin disappears
A small mismatch between the PO, receiver, supplier invoice, and job can turn into a margin problem that nobody sees until the job is already closed.
We build invoice and purchasing review workflows that compare supplier invoices against POs, material receipts, job numbers, approved vendors, expected pricing, and contract terms, then route exceptions to the right person.
Your team gets a clear answer:
- Does the invoice match the PO?
- Was the material received?
- Is the price outside the expected range?
- Should this be approved, reviewed, or escalated?
Shops with steady material purchasing can often recover 6 to 12 office hours per week while catching pricing and receiving issues earlier.
See the Invoice Review Demo →Job margin and WIP visibility without spreadsheet rebuilding
Owners should not have to wait until month-end to learn which jobs are slipping, which work centers are backed up, or which jobs are eating margin.
We build dashboards that pull from your ERP, accounting system, quoting tools, time entries, purchasing data, and production exports to show job status, labor burn, material variance, backlog, and margin risk.
Each weekly view can show:
- Jobs at risk of late delivery
- Estimated versus actual labor hours
- Material cost variance
- Bottlenecks by work center
- Recommended actions for the next production meeting
The goal is not prettier charts. The goal is fewer surprise losses and faster decisions while there is still time to protect the job.
See the Job Margin Dashboard Demo →Shop knowledge, certs, and procedures found in seconds
When a welder, project manager, or quality lead has to hunt through folders, binders, old emails, and shared drives, the job slows down.
We build cited-answer systems over approved documents like WPS/PQR files, inspection procedures, customer specs, material certs, job travelers, standard work instructions, safety procedures, and quality manuals.
Every answer includes a source trail so your team can verify it before using it.
- No unsupported answers
- No guessing on customer requirements
- No hunting through ten folders for one procedure
This can save supervisors, quality staff, and project managers 3 to 8 hours per week while reducing avoidable delays from missing or misunderstood information.
See the Knowledge Base Demo →Your current tools stay in place
We build the workflow layer around your existing fabrication, estimating, ERP, CAD/CAM, accounting, and shop-floor systems.
Supported and common systems include:
Your ERP stays where it is. Your drawings stay where they are. Your estimating process, accounting system, and shop-floor tools do not get ripped out.
We add the workflow layer that reads, routes, reviews, summarizes, and writes back when appropriate.
Three focused offers
RFQ Acceleration System
For shops losing quote speed because estimators have to gather drawings, specs, pricing context, and prior job history by hand.
Includes
- RFQ intake mapping
- Email and attachment parsing
- Drawing and spec summarization
- Similar job lookup
- Missing information checklist
- Estimator-ready quote package
- Draft customer response workflow
Best for
- Job shops
- Contract manufacturers
- Structural and sheet metal fabricators
- Shops with high RFQ volume
Job Margin and WIP Control System
For owners and operations leaders who need earlier visibility into late jobs, labor overruns, material variance, and margin risk.
Includes
- ERP and accounting data review
- Job status dashboard
- Estimated versus actual labor tracking
- Material variance monitoring
- Work center bottleneck views
- Weekly management narrative
- Exception alerts for margin risk
Best for
- Growing fabrication shops
- Multi-department production teams
- Shops with recurring margin surprises
- Owners managing through spreadsheets
Purchasing and Document Control System
For shops manually matching invoices, POs, receivers, certs, and job records across email, ERP exports, and shared drives.
Includes
- Supplier invoice intake
- PO and receiver matching
- Material cert capture
- Job number matching
- Exception queue
- Approval routing
- Audit logs
- Optional posting back to accounting systems
Best for
- Material-heavy fabrication shops
- Steel and sheet metal fabricators
- Shops with quality documentation requirements
- Companies serving aerospace, defense, energy, or industrial customers
Start with one workflow. Prove the ROI. Expand from there.
You do not need a full digital transformation project to get value.
The safest path is to pick one painful workflow, automate it, measure the results, and then expand once the system proves itself.
Most fabrication shops start with one of these:
- RFQ intake and quote preparation
- Job margin and WIP reporting
- Supplier invoice and PO matching
- Material cert and quality document retrieval
- Customer email and job status routing
- Shop procedure and knowledge search
This keeps the first project focused, measurable, and easier to approve.
Typical engagement range
Most metal fabrication automation builds start with a focused pilot.
Starter Workflow Pilot
Best for one high-value workflow
$7,500 to $15,000
Shop Automation Buildout
Best for multiple workflows or multi-department operations
$15,000 to $40,000
Ongoing Optimization and Support
Best for shops that want continuous improvement, reporting, new workflows, and support
$1,500 to $7,500 per month
Final pricing depends on workflow count, system access, data complexity, approval rules, document volume, compliance needs, and whether the workflow writes back into production systems.
The first step is not a giant commitment. It is a workflow fit assessment that identifies the fastest path to measurable ROI.
What waiting costs
Manual fabrication workflows do not just waste time. They quietly cap throughput and hide margin problems.
Every month you delay:
- Estimators lose hours gathering information instead of quoting profitable work
- RFQs sit longer and buyers move on
- Owners find out about job margin problems too late
- Office staff manually match invoices, POs, receivers, and job numbers
- Supervisors chase procedures, drawings, certs, and job details
- Growth requires more admin headcount instead of cleaner throughput
If your shop is already busy, automation is not a luxury project. It is how you create capacity without simply adding more people to chase paperwork.
How the engagement works
Week 1: Find the highest-value leak
We review your RFQ flow, estimating handoff, job status process, purchasing workflow, document control process, or reporting flow.
You get:
- Workflow map
- Automation opportunity ranking
- KPI targets
- Fixed-scope recommendation
- Implementation plan
We define success before building anything.
Week 2: Build against your real workflow
We connect to the systems, documents, exports, job files, supplier records, drawing folders, or reporting data needed for the selected workflow.
We build around your actual shop process, not a generic manufacturing template.
Week 3: Test, tune, and review
We run real historical examples through the workflow in staging. For RFQ workflows, this can include prior quote requests and completed jobs. For purchasing workflows, this can include 60 to 90 days of invoices, POs, and receipts.
You see:
- Accuracy results
- Exceptions
- Failure cases
- Confidence thresholds
- Review queue behavior
- Estimated time savings
Nothing goes live until the workflow is validated.
Week 4: Deploy, monitor, and support
We deploy the workflow, train the relevant users, monitor initial results, and support the first production cycle.
You get:
- Production workflow
- Dashboard or review queue
- Documentation
- Admin handoff
- 30 days of support
- Recommendations for the next workflow
Most builds are designed to pay back in 6 to 10 weeks of live use, depending on volume, labor cost, workflow scope, and how much estimating, office, or management time is recovered.
Built for controlled shop and customer data
Fabrication workflows often include customer drawings, proprietary specs, supplier pricing, quality records, and sometimes defense or aerospace requirements.
Our systems are designed around:
- Least-privilege access
- Encrypted data in transit and at rest
- Role-based access by department, job, and customer
- Audit logs for AI-assisted decisions
- Source-grounded answers with cited documents
- Human review thresholds for approvals and write-backs
- Client-owned cloud deployment when required
- Support for ITAR, CMMC, NIST 800-171, ISO 9001, and AS9100-aligned workflows where applicable
For shops handling controlled drawings, customer IP, CUI, quality records, or supplier pricing, we design the implementation around your security and traceability requirements from the start.
Example outcomes
| Workflow | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| RFQ intake | Estimator digs through emails, drawings, specs, and old jobs manually | Estimator-ready package with summary, missing details, and similar jobs |
| Supplier invoice review | Manual matching across invoices, POs, receivers, and job numbers | Exceptions flagged with a short approval memo |
| Job margin review | Month-end spreadsheet shows overruns after the job is already done | Weekly view of labor burn, material variance, and margin risk |
| Quality document retrieval | Staff hunt through folders for certs, WPS files, specs, and procedures | Cited answers and document links from approved sources |
| Production meeting prep | Manual updates from ERP exports, whiteboards, and floor conversations | Current WIP, bottlenecks, late jobs, and next actions in one view |
Why MVP.dev
MVP.dev builds AI business operating systems, internal tools, and automation layers for companies that need real operational outcomes, not AI experiments.
You get:
- 25 years of software architecture and delivery experience
- AI automation strategy and implementation under one roof
- Practical systems built around existing workflows
- Human-in-the-loop design where accuracy matters
- Clear KPIs before development starts
- Production-minded delivery, not prototype theater
The goal is not to impress your team with AI.
The goal is to help your estimators, office staff, supervisors, and managers move faster with the people and systems you already have.
Building the operating playbook too?
Our partners at osforyour.business/metal-fabrication cover the org-design, process, and people side of running a modern metal fabrication business. We handle the execution layer that makes it run, so the system they help you design actually gives the hours and margin back.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much time or money can this save?
It depends on volume, but metal fabrication shops usually see the fastest savings in RFQ prep, purchasing review, job reporting, and document retrieval. A shop handling 30 to 80 RFQs per month may recover 10 to 20 estimating hours per month. Purchasing and invoice review can often save 6 to 12 office hours per week. Catching one material pricing error, duplicate invoice, or margin leak can also protect $2,500 to $10,000 in a month, depending on job size and material spend.
Will this work with our ERP or shop management system?
Usually, yes. We build around your current systems, exports, APIs, email flows, shared drives, and reporting structure. That can include JobBOSS², E2, Global Shop Solutions, Epicor, ProShop, M1, Fulcrum, Tekla PowerFab, QuickBooks, NetSuite, and related CAD/CAM or estimating tools.
Will this replace JobBOSS, E2, Epicor, ProShop, or our quoting software?
No. The goal is to improve the workflow around your current stack, not force a migration. Your ERP, estimating tools, CAD files, accounting system, and shop-floor process stay in place. The automation layer reads, routes, summarizes, and writes back only where appropriate and approved.
Can this read drawings, specs, and customer requirements?
It can help summarize and organize drawing packages, specifications, customer notes, and related documents. For technical or high-risk decisions, the system should prepare the information for estimator, engineer, quality, or supervisor review rather than making final decisions on its own.
Can this support quality documentation and traceability?
Yes. We can build workflows around material certs, inspection records, WPS and PQR files, customer specs, job travelers, NCRs, and quality manuals. Answers can include source links so your team can verify the document before using it.
What about ITAR, CMMC, or customer confidentiality requirements?
We design the system around your requirements. That can include least-privilege access, encryption, audit logs, client-owned cloud deployment, role-based access, controlled document handling, and human review controls. If you handle CUI, defense work, aerospace work, or controlled drawings, we address those constraints before implementation starts.
What is the first step?
Start with a workflow fit assessment. We identify the workflow with the highest ROI potential, estimate the time or margin impact, and recommend a focused pilot. You will know what should be built, why it matters, what it should cost, and how success will be measured before committing to a full implementation.
Get the hours and margin back
If your shop is still relying on manual RFQ prep, spreadsheet-based job reporting, invoice matching, or folder hunting for quality documents, there is likely a faster way to run the operation.
MVP.dev can help you identify the highest-value workflow, build the automation layer, and deploy it inside your current metal fabrication stack.
Get a Workflow Fit Assessment See the Metal Fabrication Automation Demos