Anatomy of an RFQ: Where the Hours Actually Go Before the Quote Gets Built

Ask an EMS sales leader how long it takes to quote an RFQ and you'll get a number usually somewhere between three and five days.

Ask where the time actually goes, and the answer gets vague.

The vagueness isn't accidental. Most quoting organizations have never instrumented their own workflow at the task level, which means the ratio of time spent on judgment versus time spent on data wrangling is more guessed at than measured. When you do measure it, the results are consistent  and they point directly at where the automation opportunity lives.

Here's the anatomy of a typical mid-complexity RFQ at a mid-market EMS company. Think of it as a time-and-motion study of the work between the inbox and the outbound quote.

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Stage 1: Inbox triage and assignment
(15-30 minutes)

The RFQ arrives as an email with one or more attachments. Before anything productive can happen, someone has to:

• Open the email and read it for context (is this a real RFQ, a re-quote, a revision?)
• Identify what format the BOM is in (Excel, PDF, email body, image, or some combination)
• Check whether the customer is an existing account, a past customer, or new
• Decide which quoting manager it belongs to and route it

This stage looks like it should take five minutes. In practice, it often takes twenty  because the routing decision is loaded with context that needs to be looked up, not just known.

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Stage 2: BOM extraction and normalization  (45-120 minutes)

This is where the biggest time sink lives. A clean, well-structured BOM from an established customer might take 15 minutes to normalize. A messy one with PDF tables, mixed manufacturer naming conventions, missing reference designators  can take hours. The tasks include:

• Copying the BOM out of its original format
• Standardizing part number formats (TDK vs. Murata vs. Samsung all write MPNs differently)
• Filling in missing information (package codes, tolerances, manufacturer details)
• Reconciling any obviously wrong data (duplicate line items, quantity errors, obsolete MPNs)

None of this requires engineering judgment. It requires pattern recognition and the patience to not skip steps. A junior quoter or an admin can do most of it  but usually doesn't, because the BOM lives inside the quoting tool that the engineer owns.

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Stage 3: Component sourcing and pricing  (60-180 minutes)

For every line on the BOM, the quoter needs current pricing and availability. The typical workflow:

• Log in to the first distributor portal, paste in the MPN, check price and stock
• Note the results in a spreadsheet or the quoting tool
• Repeat for the second distributor
• Repeat for the third, if the part is exotic or tariff-exposed
• Flag any parts that show allocation concerns, obsolescence notices, or unusually long lead times

For a 150-line BOM with multiple distributors per part, this can consume 2-3 hours of sequential, interruption-prone work. And the data is perishable  pricing and availability can shift between this step and the quote actually going out, which is how tariff and allocation exposure sneaks in at the last mile.

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Stage 4: Quote scaffolding and margin decisions  (30-60 minutes)

With the BOM priced, the quoter builds the actual quote. This stage combines necessary engineering judgment with unnecessary formatting work:

• Calculate material cost, apply overage factors, labor estimates, NRE costs
• Decide on a margin strategy for this specific customer, this specific opportunity
• Format the quote into the company's template (often in Excel or a Word doc)
• Proof the numbers for errors that would be embarrassing if sent out

The margin decision is the part that actually requires the quoting engineer. The rest, the formatting, the proofing, the template population is production work that adds no competitive value.

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Stage 5: Review, approval, and send
(15-45 minutes)

Depending on the company, the quote may need a sign-off from a sales manager, the VP of operations, or a pricing committee before it goes out. The review itself is fast. The delay is usually in waiting for the reviewer to get to it.

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The total  and the automatable portion

A typical mid-complexity RFQ, end to end, consumes 3-7 hours of quoting-team time before it hits the customer's inbox.

Of that total, roughly 60-75% is automation-ready: inbox parsing, BOM normalization, component sourcing, quote scaffolding, formatting. The judgment-required portion  margin strategy, customer-specific pricing, engineering risk assessment  accounts for the remaining 25-40%.

When the automatable portion is actually automated, a 6-hour RFQ cycle compresses to 90 minutes. Not because anyone worked harder. Because the work that shouldn't require a human stopped requiring one.

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What that means for capacity

Run the math on your own operation. If your team's quoting cycle is currently 4 hours per RFQ and 70% of that is automatable, automation takes you to 1.2 hours per RFQ, a 3.3× effective capacity increase on the same headcount. That's how EMS companies close the 40% response-rate gap without hiring.


The first step is usually just measuring what you have now. If you'd like to see what your current unanswered-RFQ volume is costing in annualized revenue, there's a free 30-second calculator here:
https://www.breadboard.com/quotation-calculator