BOM quoting, drafted the way your team scrubs and costs a BOM.

An OEM sends a spreadsheet of parts, usually with Gerbers, an assembly drawing and three or four build quantities. Before anyone can price it, someone turns every line into a part you can actually buy, checks what is going away, works out how many to order at each quantity and counts what your machines and people will do to the board.

In the proof of concept, AI works through copies of BOMs you already quoted and returns a costed BOM laid out the way your team builds one: scrub notes, the part chosen and its alternates, lifecycle status, buy quantity, then the assembly and NRE lines. Every price and lead time names the saved quote data it came from, and a line with nothing behind it stays blank.

The BOM disagrees with itself. The quantity on a line should equal the number of reference designators beside it, and on customer BOMs it often doesn't: R14 through R22 listed with a quantity of eight, or a part marked DNP still counted. Some lines carry only a description, such as a 10k 0402 resistor, and some put a distributor's stock number where the manufacturer part number belongs. The draft fixes nothing silently. Each line it touched shows what the customer wrote, what the draft read and why, and a part it had to choose is marked as a proposal for the OEM.

A part can be active today and gone by the build. Lines get flagged as not recommended for new designs, end of life with a last-time-buy date, or obsolete. Suppliers announce discontinued parts in notices that often cite JEDEC's JESD48; one discrete maker's notices allow six months to place a last order on a multiple-source part, nine months on a sole-source part, and a year from the notice for delivery. The draft carries the status and any last-order date your team saved with the quote, and offers alternates from your approved vendor list or the OEM's. A part on neither list becomes a question for the OEM.

Buy quantity is not BOM quantity. Quantity per board times the build is only the start. Small chip parts lose pieces to the tape leader that feeds the placement machine, so assemblers add attrition, and one published model asks for a hundred or more extra pieces of an 0402 or larger chip part. The total then rounds up to the supplier's minimum, package or reel, and a full reel can cost less than the cut tape it replaces. Trade guidance has long told EMS shops to name minimum-buy, non-cancelable non-returnable and reeled material in the first quote, because someone ends up owning the leftovers. The draft shows each step and the price break it landed on at every build quantity.

Assembly cost is counted off the board. The draft counts SMT placements on each side, through-hole parts and whether they go through wave, selective solder or hand work, BGAs that need X-ray, press-fit connectors and areas to mask before conformal coat. Test changes the NRE: a flying probe needs no fixture, while in-circuit test needs a bed-of-nails fixture built for that board. A stencil for each pasted side, machine programming and first article each get a line. Rates and minutes come from your quoting rules, and the bare board is priced only from a fab quote you send, at the IPC-6012 class and finish the fab drawing calls out.

Your reviewer. The owner names the person who knows your quoting best, often the quoting manager or a senior buyer. They hold each draft against the costed BOM that went out: every part chosen, every flag, every buy quantity, the assembly and NRE lines and each question put to the OEM. Include a BOM with consigned parts, one with an obsolete line and one box build, if you quote them.

After a yes, each new RFQ gets a draft costed BOM as it arrives, for about 30 days.

Your quoting lead checks every line, sends any alternate to the OEM for approval and sets the price, then sends the quote from your own system. Scoring carries on through the month, so the live run is judged the same way the test was.