AI for metal service centers, tested on quotes your inside sales desk already priced.

A service center sells processing as well as metal. The federal industry definition for NAICS 423510, metal service centers and other metal merchant wholesalers, says service centers hold inventory and may saw, shear, bend, level, clean or edge metal on a custom basis as part of the sale. So each quote line is worked out by hand: weight, cuts, processing, price. Every request your desk already answered sits beside the quote that went out, and that pair is the grading key.

Your cost arrives per hundredweight, plus extras. ArcelorMittal's 2026 U.S. flat products price book, effective August 5, 2026, prices steel in dollars per 100 pounds, the hundredweight or cwt, and adds schedules of extras for thickness and width, grade, processing and testing. It even charges an extra on orders under 40 tons per item, defining an item as one size, grade, destination and delivery date. Your quotes resell that cost in whatever unit the customer buys: per cwt, per pound, per foot, per piece or per sheet.

Spot or index, owned or tolled, stocked or bought out. Worthington Steel's glossary describes spot pricing for one-time or smaller orders and index pricing tied to a published benchmark. Some coils you run belong to the customer and the bill covers only the work; Invera says INVEX toll orders can bill at production or at shipping. A size you don't stock may be bought out, and both Invera and Enmark list buyouts among the cases their systems handle. Each draft line has to say which case it is.

The software splits by product form, and so does the work. Invera sells INVEX in separate lines for flat rolled, general and multi-line, toll processing, plate processors and tube mills; Enmark offers Eniteo for multi-line, pipe and tube, plate, bar, specialty metals, toll processing and flat rolled. A plate shop quotes burned shapes, a flat-rolled shop slit widths and coil weights, so your reviewer picks a sample that matches what you sell.

Metal turns fast. Every month the Metals Service Center Institute (MSCI) reports steel and aluminum shipments, inventories and months of supply for U.S. and Canadian service centers in its Metals Activity Report. The test tracks no market; it checks whether drafts price the way your desk does.

Commercial work only. Aerospace and defense orders stay out, and no AMS, MIL or similar specification enters the test. Certifying material, editing a mill test report and judging whether metal meets a spec all stay with your quality people; the proof of concept does none of them.