“I’d like a quote for 1, 5, 25, 50, 100, 1000.” I’m sure you’ve seen or heard people request quantities like this before. From a manufacturers’ point of view, this can cause an issue with quoting a price. Reason being, the difference of how a part is manufactured when making 1 as oppose to 1,000 are polar opposites because they will be made differently. You may be asking yourself, ‘why when it’s the same part,’ right? The answer to that solely depends on the actual part being made, but let’s do an example.

Say you’re fabricating a sheet metal enclosure where there are several bends, holes, welding, and hardware. When fabricating low quantities, here are the factors that need to be considered: Continue reading →