Spare parts quotes, found by serial number and priced from your lists.

A maintenance planner writes: serial 4127, two cam followers, the gripper fingers, and whichever seal kit fits the filler valves. Your parts coordinator opens that machine's records, works out which revision of each part it carries, checks stock and lead time, prices every line and sends the quote, often with a question for the plant.

In the proof of concept, AI works through copies of requests you already answered and drafts each quote in the order your desk builds one: machine identified, every item matched to your part number from that serial number's records, price and lead time from your lists. A line it couldn't settle goes to a person, with the reason.

The nameplate comes first. NFPA 79, the electrical standard for industrial machinery, has the machine nameplate carry the supplier's name, the model or serial number, the supply ratings and the number of the electrical drawings or their index. Machines sold into Europe also carry a plate under Annex I of the Machinery Directive with the type, the serial number and the year of construction. So a plate photo usually settles which build and which schematic set a request means. A request that names only a model gets a question back for the serial number, never a guess between builds.

As-built is not as-designed. The engineering BOM says what a model should contain; the as-built record says what serial 4127 actually shipped with, after substitutions and running changes. SAP's documentation describes an as-built configuration as the structure of a serialized assembly that was produced, with later changes kept as an as-maintained configuration. Infor LN can show both the as-built and the as-maintained structure of a configuration, and IFS Cloud wants a shop order's tracked structure complete before the parent serial is received. Many builders have none of that, only a BOM export in the job folder. The draft uses whatever record you send, and a retrofit or field change written up in a service report outranks the build record.

Made parts and buyouts age differently. A part you make is quoted at the drawing revision that machine carries; a newer revision that won't fit the older build is a question for engineering. A purchased component follows its maker's lifecycle. Rockwell Automation, for one, sorts its products as Active, Active Mature, End of Life and Discontinued, and asks customers holding End of Life products to plan migrations and last-time buys. A controller or drive at the end of that road may need a replacement that changes wiring or the program, so the draft flags it for an engineer and never puts a substitute on the quote by itself.

Plants ask in their own numbers. A plant that bought through a project contractor may know your part only by its own material number. On oil and gas and other capital projects, the builder often fills in a SPIR, a spare parts list and interchangeability record, which the owner loads into its ERP as material master data. So a request can quote a line from your own SPIR, and the draft traces it back to your part number. Packaging lines add change parts, the star wheels, feed screws and guides made for one container, so a request for a new bottle size is engineering work, not a lookup.

Your reviewer. The owner names the person who knows your parts quoting best, often the aftermarket or parts manager. They hold each draft against the quote that went out: machine and serial, every part number and revision, the price list used, lead times and each question raised. Include a request for an old machine, one where a field change mattered and one that asked for an obsolete component.

With a yes, each new parts request gets a draft quote as it arrives, for about 30 days.

Your parts desk checks, edits and sends every quote from your own system, and anything flagged for engineering still goes to engineering first. The scoring table keeps running, so the live month is judged the way the test was.