Customer specs into configured machine quotes, clause by clause.

A buyer sends a user requirements specification, or an RFQ with a spec behind it: the products and sizes, the rate, utilities, controls, documents and acceptance tests. Your applications engineer reads it, picks the base machine, works through the options, marks what you won't meet and writes both the quote and the clause-by-clause answer. Some specs run to hundreds of numbered requirements.

In the proof of concept, AI goes through copies of specs you already quoted and drafts the answer to every clause, with the configured quote behind it: base model, options from your price book, utilities, documents, acceptance test terms, then exceptions and questions. A clause that no option covers is marked for engineering, never answered.

A URS says what; your quote says how. Pharmaceutical buyers who work to ISPE's GAMP 5 guide write a user requirements specification that states what the machine must do, not how to build it, and give each requirement its own number, such as FR-01. The functional specification that answers it is often the supplier's to write. Many food and consumer goods buyers write specs the same way. So the quote answers each numbered clause as met by the standard machine, met by a named option, met with a clarification, or taken as an exception, in the customer's own numbering.

The electrical clauses set the panel. A spec states the plant's supply, such as 480 V three-phase at 60 Hz in the US or 400 V at 50 Hz across much of Europe, and often the available fault current. Under NEC 409.22 a control panel can't be installed where the available fault current is higher than its marked short-circuit current rating, and NFPA 79 puts that rating on the machine nameplate. A spec that names a higher fault current than your standard panel carries, or IEC 60204-1 in place of NFPA 79, changes components and price. The draft lists those clauses for your electrical engineer and prices only options you have already engineered.

Plant standards name the controls. Large end users often publish engineering standards of their own: the PLC family, HMI, drives, safety relays and pneumatics they accept, and how a machine reports its state. Packaging buyers often ask for PackML, published by ISA as ANSI/ISA-TR88.00.02, which standardizes machine states, modes and tag names. A required PLC brand other than yours can mean new software as well as new parts, so each such clause sits beside the option that answers it or goes to engineering. Dairy and food buyers may call for the 3-A Symbol, which a builder can show only after a third-party verification inspection by a Certified Conformance Evaluator, so that inspection gets its own line or question.

Acceptance tests and the calendar carry cost. The quote says what the factory acceptance test covers at your plant before shipment and what the site acceptance test covers after installation. Published machinery terms often make the buyer supply the containers, caps, labels and product for the FAT. For machines bound for the EU, Regulation (EU) 2023/1230 replaces the Machinery Directive from 20 January 2027, so the ship date can decide which rules the CE file follows. The draft reuses your past FAT and SAT terms, flags a delivery date past that changeover, and leaves the conformity route to your engineers.

Your reviewer. The owner names the person who knows your quoting best, usually the lead applications or sales engineer. They hold each draft against the quote and clause answers that went out: base machine, options chosen, exceptions and clarifications, questions raised, acceptance test terms and option prices. Include a spec you declined, one with a customer's controls standard and one for a machine bound for Europe, if you quote them.

Once your reviewer says yes, each new spec gets a draft answer and a configured quote as it comes in, for about 30 days.

Your applications engineer checks, changes and prices every quote, engineering reviews each clause the draft routed to it, and your team sends the quote from its own system. Every live draft is scored on the same table as the test.