Quick Quote

Team Name

Laminar Workflow

Team Logo

Timeline

Spring 2021 – Summer 2021

Students

Laith Marzouq
Eric Keng
Nishan Thapa
Sindhu Parajuli
Alisha Kunwar

Sponsor

Robert Gullette

Abstract

As developers, the major goal of our project is to uplift the business value of 2D cutting companies by focusing on rapid and consistent price quoting and transactions. As the result of this project, customers will get the instant and consistent price quote, which will make their experience better. On the other hand, the cutting company will receive an automated “price quoting” application which will take their business to next level.

Background

With the development of new tools and technologies, there are wide numbers of metal cutting shops that provide efficient and quick 2D cutting services to their customers. However, these shops are lacking an efficient price quoting service for customers. Currently, a customer must wait an extended period to get a price quote for their design. The current process uses manual price quoting services where a customer will send their design file to a company. This design is reviewed by an employee of the shop who estimates a price quote for the customer. This process will cause a significant delay to the customer as well as extra labor for the company. Moreover, the price quoted manually is not consistent or convenient, which adds further dissatisfaction for the customer. There are thousands of 2D cutting companies that are facing this problem in the US. Just in the DFW area, there are more than 50 companies trying to figure out a solution for this problem.

2D cutting companies need a solution to maintain a rapid flow in their cutting process. Providing instant price quotes ensures consistency in their price quotes. In order to achieve this goal, our team is developing a web-based application “Quick Quote”, which could be a primary tool for estimating prices. Quick Quote will provide an instant price quote for cutting processes based on the DXF files uploaded by customers. Moreover, customers can immediately place an order if the quoted price sounds convincing to them. The web application will focus on easy and secured online transactions for the customers.

Project Requirements

1. Customizable Landing Page
2. Parsing of DXF File
3. Individual Account Sign Up and Login (User / Customer)
4. Modifiable Quoting Parameters
5. Drag and Drop File Feature
6. Get Instant Price Quote
7. Submit and Pay for quote after receiving quote
8. Track order status and order history
9. Quoting based on other file types
10. Consistent Price Output Generation

System Overview

The Quick Quote application will be separated into three layers, which are the User layer, Server layer, and Database layer. The User Layer is the primary interface for buyers and sellers using the Quick Quote application. The Server layer will perform all the application logic, and it acts as an interface between the user and database layers. The database layer is the layer where all of the information and data will be stored.

Results

Future Work

In the future, Quick Quote would benefit most from storing customer information, so buyers can make accounts and have all their information be auto filled when ordering. Storing that customer data would also help the Job shops know if a customer is new or returning, which can help them allocate more or less resources into advertisements.

Quick-Quote also needs to create a product that allows companies to offer a competitive instant quote service. Offering quoting based off several file types will increase the market appeal for this product. Some file type to be considered: STEP (.stp, .step), STL (.stl), Parasolid, Autodesk Inventor (.ipt), and SOLIDWORKS (.sldprt).