RFQ turnaround is where a shop wins or loses a job, and most of it is repetitive work that happens before anyone needs to make a real decision. We build this as an operations system: it watches the inbox, pulls in the drawing and spec sheet, reads quantities, materials, and tolerances off them, checks that against your pricing and lead-time rules, and drafts a quote back to the customer in minutes instead of days. The same intake step files the drawing under the right job number and flags anything missing, like a callout with no tolerance or a material not on your list, so a person only opens the RFQs that actually need judgment. Pricing a genuinely new part, or deciding whether a tight tolerance is worth the risk, still needs someone who knows the shop floor.
Job-status calls are close to pure repetition: the customer wants an answer that already exists in your scheduling or ERP system. An operations system can pull that status and message the customer automatically, on a set cadence or after a milestone (material in, first article done, ready to ship), so the phone doesn't have to ring just for a 'where's my order' question, and it can flag a delay before the customer has to ask. What it shouldn't do is decide which of two late jobs gets the machine first, or manage a customer who's upset about a slip. That scheduling and relationship call stays with a person.
Certs and quality paperwork are the tax on every shipment: material certs, conformance statements, inspection reports, sometimes AS9100 or ITAR documentation, all of which has to be assembled and matched to the right job before the truck leaves. An AI agent wired into your document storage and quality system, with guardrails on what it's allowed to send out, can build that packet, check it against a checklist of what a given customer or contract requires, and hold a shipment that's missing a cert instead of letting it go out incomplete. Final sign-off that the paperwork is accurate and the part meets print stays with your quality person, always. If the shop also wants new RFQs chased down or quiet quotes followed up on, that's a marketing engine doing the same kind of work at the front of the funnel instead of the back.