An automation quote is a price for a machine that does not exist yet.
What the supplier is actually pricing is a set of assumptions. Where you gave information, they priced your process. Where you did not, they priced their best guess, and no two engineering teams guess the same way. One reads “high volume” as two shifts, another as three. One assumes the part arrives oriented, another designs a feeder to orient it. Both quoted honestly. They quoted different machines.
That is why three quotes come back three prices apart, and why comparing them is usually impossible. It is also the part of the process you control completely.
The information problem continues after the quote. NIST describes a manufacturing digital thread as the effective communication of product definition through manufacturing and quality activities, with information flowing back to design. That thread starts with the inputs available when the concept is priced. If the rate, variants, tolerances or plant constraints are missing, the gap does not disappear; it becomes an assumption carried into the machine concept. A specification written around variants and quality therefore carries far more useful information than one written only around output, and the quality of that information decides whether your quotes are comparable at all.
Start with the part, not the machine
Most enquiries open by describing equipment someone has in mind. A dial table. A robot cell. Something like the machine at the other plant. That is useful context but it is not what a concept gets built from.
Send CAD or drawings, material and finish, and the tolerances that matter functionally rather than every dimension on the print. Say which datum each critical feature references.
The datum matters more than it looks. Our mechanical designers model the fixture in SolidWorks against your datum scheme, and that decides where the part is located and clamped. Locate off a surface the print does not control and the nest will hold the part beautifully while the feature you care about moves. Tolerances set the repeatability budget for the entire station, and the fixture consumes part of it before the robot has done anything.
Say where the part varies. Moulded components from multi-cavity tooling are not one part but a family of similar ones, and flash, short shots, warp and sink all change how a part sits in a nest.
Send samples, including the bad ones
Nominal parts confirm the machine works when everything goes right. That is the easy case.
Send parts from the edges of what you accept, and the ones that have caused trouble on the line. Availability is not determined by how a cell handles conforming parts. It is determined by what it does with the ones at the limit, and a nest designed around nominal geometry will either jam or pass a marginal assembly downstream. Neither appears in a cycle-time calculation. Both appear in your OEE, and they are much of what separates a machine that demonstrates well from one that holds up in production.
If the part is a mating assembly, send both halves. If it has variants, send one of each.
Rate: say which number is the requirement
Annual volume alone does not size a system. Give volume, shift pattern, required cycle time or takt, and what availability the business case assumes.
Your takt then gets decomposed into a cycle-time budget: index or transfer, process time at the slowest station, load and unload, verification. The station that does not fit determines the architecture. That single calculation is often what separates a dial table from a linear transfer system from a multi-station cell.
Robot motion time is the element most often estimated badly by eye, so we simulate it rather than guess. Depending on the platform that means MotoSim, RobotStudio or RoboGuide, checking reach, orientation, singularities and actual move times against your part and fixture before anything is quoted. Where several stations interact, throughput gets modelled in FlexSim, because station cycle times do not add up the way intuition suggests once starving and blocking are involved.
Be explicit about peak versus normal rate. A system sized for a peak you hit twice a year is a different investment from one sized for your normal rate with overtime absorbing it. Only you can say which is the right business answer.
Variants, quality and your plant
If the line runs more than one part number, send the variant matrix, how often you change over, and who performs it. A changeover done by a technician with a procedure allows different tooling than one done by an operator mid-shift.
Say what has to be verified and what evidence has to exist afterward. There is a real difference between confirming a component is present and confirming it is correctly seated, and a larger one between checking it and recording the check against a serial number. Each consumes cycle time at the station where it happens.
Then send the plant, not just the part. Footprint, ceiling height, how material arrives and leaves, utilities, your controls and PLC standards, safety requirements, and whether the cell goes into a new area or a line already running. Plant constraints are the most commonly omitted input and the most disruptive when they surface late.
Controls standards deserve naming. Our electrical and fluid power design is drawn in ePLan, and the panel scope, safety architecture and interfaces to your existing equipment are all shaped by what you tell us about your standards. That decision belongs at quote stage, not at buyoff.
Who actually sees what you send
It does not go to a salesperson who forwards it. It goes to Applications, who develop the concept and review it internally with Sales before anything reaches you. You then approve and sign off the concept design and project plan.
From there the project gets a team rather than an owner. A project manager, project engineering, a controls lead, and separate design leads for mechanical, electrical and fluid power. Those are three distinct design disciplines with three distinct leads, not one engineer covering all of it, which is why the electrical and pneumatic consequences of a mechanical decision tend to surface during design rather than during build.
Project requirements and risks are identified early and referenced throughout concept development, design, build and validation. Buy-off criteria are defined during quotation and project definition so the required testing, production parts and labour can be understood and costed before the project begins. The exact acceptance plan is agreed per project, based on scope, production requirements and installation conditions.
The quality of what you send at the start is what that whole thread is built on. It is the practical reason the questions above matter more than they look.
Innovative Automation brings together more than 225 employees across its Ontario operations, with engineering, manufacturing and integration led from Barrie and approximately 127,000 square feet across the company’s Ontario facilities. Assembly, dispensing, inspection and testing, material handling and robotics are all in-house competencies, so the concept follows the application rather than a single equipment category. Our role is to recommend the process and architecture that best fit the application.
What you do not need to have figured out
Concept development is our work. So is process selection, choosing between a robot and dedicated automation, feeding approach, station layout and cycle-time modelling. Arriving without a preferred architecture often produces a better result than arriving with one chosen before anyone examined the part.
Some things genuinely change the design and are worth resolving first: the tolerances that matter, the rate you must hold, the variants, the plant constraints. Others get worked out together.
And some gaps are worth raising because they are gaps. If you have never measured the variation in an incoming component, that tells an integrator where the risk sits, and it is better discussed early than found during debug.
Pre-quote checklist
Have ready
- Drawings or CAD with functional tolerances and datums identified
- Samples across the range you accept, including known problem parts
- Volume, shift pattern, required cycle time or takt, assumed availability
- Variant list and changeover frequency
- Footprint, ceiling height, utilities
- New area or existing line
Helpful if available
- Process documentation and known failure modes
- Inspection, error-proofing and traceability requirements, with customer specifications attached
- Controls and PLC standards, safety requirements
- Target production date and budget range
We work out together
- Concept and process sequence
- Robot, feeding and equipment selection
- Layout and cycle-time modelling
- Operator interaction, ergonomics, maintenance access
Frequently asked questions
Why do automation quotes vary so much between suppliers?
Because each supplier filled the same information gaps with different assumptions. Different assumptions about rate, variation or plant constraints produce genuinely different machine concepts.
Do I need finished drawings to get a quote?
No. Samples and a clear statement of rate, variants and plant constraints often matter more.
Should I share a budget range?
A range serves you better than silence. Without one a supplier quotes either the most complete solution it can justify or the leanest, and neither may be what you wanted.
How many samples should I send?
Enough to represent the population rather than the nominal condition, including parts from every cavity and any that have caused problems.
Send us the application
You do not need the full package to start. A part, a rate and the constraint you are trying to remove is enough.
Send those and our applications engineers will tell you what else we would need to quote it accurately, what we would want to look at first, and where we think the risk sits. We design, build and debug these systems in Barrie, which is why the questions we ask early are the ones that decide the cost later.