Sep 2023 – Sep 2024Engineering the sale. Automating the rest.
Hutchinson Stop-Choc designs anti-vibration mounts and illuminated control panels for aerospace and defence. I sized mounts for customers' vibration problems, and automated the quoting behind every sale.
Three areas, one placement.
Half engineering, half sales: solving customers' vibration problems, then building the tools that let the sales team spend their time on customers instead of paperwork.
Quote automation
A software robot that prices, documents and drafts a quote in under 3 minutes.
Jump to it ↗ 02Vibration engineering
Choosing the mount that stops damaging frequencies reaching costly equipment.
Jump to it ↗ 03Sales tools
Lost-quote analysis, inflation-based pricing, order matching and a website chatbot.
Jump to it ↗A quote in under 3 minutes, not over 10.
The sales team were buried in quoting. I learned robotic process automation (RPA): software that works a computer's screens the way a person would. Then I built QuoteMe in UiPath, a robot that does the whole job, from looking up the customer to drafting the email.
- Read the requestThe salesperson fills in the QuoteMe sheet: customer, delivery address, part number and quantities.
- Find or create the customerThe bot logs into the quoting website and finds the company, or sets up new client and company accounts.
- Pull the historyIn the company's business system (an ERP, Infor XA) it reads the part's last ten purchase orders: date, price and quantity.
- Price it for todayIf the part sold in the last two years, it adjusts the price with the Office for National Statistics' material and labour cost indexes, so the quote keeps pace with inflation. If not, it checks the price-break sheet or flags it for re-costing.
- File and draftIt exports the quote as a PDF into the customer's folder by quote number, then drafts the email with it attached, ready for the salesperson to check and send.
- Read QuoteMe sheetcustomer · part · quantityXLSX
- Customer found on quoting site✓
- Last 10 orders pulledbusiness system✓
- Material & labour indexes appliedofficial cost indexes£
- Quote exported as PDFCustomer › Quote no.PDF
- Email drafted for review✉
QuoteMe quoting robot
A UiPath robotic process automation (RPA) workflow across Excel, the quoting website and Infor XA, using computer vision to work the screens, with exception handling that reports problems back to the sheet.
Quote document automation
An Excel macro (VBA) that exports each finished quote as a PDF, files it by customer and quote number, and drafts the email with it attached.
Price index calculator
A spreadsheet that combines price indexes to work out component prices from current labour and material costs, so quotes keep pace with inflation.
Fast is not the same as right.
On a part that had not sold in over two years, the bot was still four times faster, but its price came in at a 42% gross margin instead of the 56% target. Old history plus index adjustments was not enough.
So I recommended regular pricing-data updates, a more dynamic pricing algorithm for parts with sparse history, and integrating the quoting system with the business system (ERP) so purchase orders link back to their quotes.
Stopping the shake before it breaks things.
A customer's surveillance equipment on airborne vehicles was being damaged by vibration. The mount used on their older, heavier model was too stiff for the new one.
- Model the loadFrom their drawings and specs: the weight distribution, each mount's position relative to the centre of gravity, and the mass moments of inertia (Ixx, Iyy, Izz).
- Find the right stiffnessThe stiffer mount amplified the damaging 15–40 Hz band. A softer mount from the same family isolated it.
- Prove itValidated in BarrySoft, shown to the customer as plots, and quoted with a Limiting Conditions of Use table covering temperature, g-force, humidity, chemicals and fire resistance.
I later used the same method on a large generator, working out force transmission, displacement and isolation efficiency. The customer accepted my softer-mount recommendation as the best solution.
Giving the sales team better numbers.
Smaller tools that turned scattered purchase orders and quotes into answers: what we lost, why, and what to charge.
Lost-quote analysis
Finds unsuccessful quotes automatically and shows product strengths and weaknesses, filtered by sales engineer, division, market and time frame, with per-person KPIs. Handles unrecorded negotiations and unquoted purchases.
Order-to-quote matching
An Excel macro (VBA) that imports shipment history from the business system (ERP) and cross-references it with the quotation database, so every purchase order is matched to its quote.
Pricing and margin analysis
Price variations worked out from historical sales, accounting for labour, materials, inflation, exchange rates and shipping, with profit margins presented for a major sale.
Website chatbot
A BotPress chatbot to generate leads and recommend products from a visitor's answers. Fitting it into an outdated website taught me a lot about legacy systems.
What the placement gave me.
Engineering, sales and automation, all in one role.
Automation
- Robotic process automation (UiPath)
- Computer vision and document understanding
- Excel macros (VBA)
- Advanced Excel formulas
- BotPress chatbots
Engineering
- Vibration isolation analysis
- Mass moments of inertia
- Mount stiffness selection
- BarrySoft simulation
- Reading technical drawings
Commercial
- Quoting and pricing
- Inflation and index pricing
- Margin analysis
- Sales performance measures (KPIs)
- Business systems (Infor XA ERP)
Working with people
- Customer meetings and requirements
- Presenting solutions to customers
- Writing technical reports for customers
- Design team collaboration