← Manufacturing
MOD-01 · The model · Phase 1 of 6

Quoting

Phase 01

A drawing, a bill of materials, and a target volume go in — a production tier and a price come back in minutes. The price is computed, not negotiated, because the tier model does the pricing work. No sales cycle stands between the request and a number.

What happens

Three moves, minutes apart

01 · The request arrives — light on purpose

Quoting asks for the minimum that prices honestly: a drawing, a BOM, a target volume. Nothing more is required yet — the full structured package (BOM levels, drawing packs, suggested assembly) belongs to industrialization, after the order. Asking for it before a price exists would just rebuild the sales cycle this phase removes.

02 · The spec is read against the tier model

Five properties of the request are mapped: batch size, recurrence, product stability, quality and traceability requirements, and portability needs. These are the same five inputs the public tier calculator uses today — the quoting engine will be that model taken seriously, and the calculator is its v0.1.

03 · A tier is assigned — and the tier fixes the economics

The tier determines the engineering effort, the unit-cost curve, and which hubs are even eligible to run the work. That is why a number can come back in minutes: once the tier is known, the price is a computation, not a negotiation.

Worked example — fictional product
Request in EX-100 handheld inspection unit · assembly drawing + 7-line BOM · 800 units/year, recurring quarterly batches of 200.
Tier model reads Moderate recurring volume · stabilizing design · documented inspection required · one site is enough → Tier 3, modular cell.
Quote out Tier 3 · unit price band · industrialization (NRE) as a separate line · capacity slot options with start dates. The order will bind to the tier and quality contract — not to a specific factory.

Run the same mapping yourself: the production tier calculator encodes this model, in the open.

What you are buying

Capacity, not a factory relationship

This phase is where Layer 01 — capacity as infrastructure — meets the customer. What is quoted is not a slot on one specific line: it is capacity in a certified network, bound to a tier and a quality contract.

Today — the locked relationship
Your product One factory Locked in
  • Price negotiated case by case, over weeks
  • Process knowledge lives inside the supplier's walls
  • Capacity implicit in lead time
  • Risk hidden; switching slow and expensive
Moduloa — the configurable resource
Tier + blueprint Certified hub A Certified hub B Certified hub C
  • Priced by production tier, in minutes
  • Process knowledge encoded in the blueprint and carried with the product
  • Capacity reserved, measured, and visible
  • Production moves when tariffs, energy, risk, or demand move
Reserved

Capacity is secured ahead of need — a priced slot at a hub, not a hope inside someone's lead time.

Priced

Pricing follows the production tier and the capacity consumed — structured, not case-by-case bargaining.

Comparable

Hub certification makes capability measurable, so two hubs can be honestly compared for the same blueprint.

Routable

At the higher tiers, a validated blueprint can be deployed at another certified hub when cost, risk, tariffs, or demand justify the move.

The honest limits

What has to be proven

Computed pricing is a claim, not yet a demonstration. The tier model is v0.1 — a deliberately simple draft published to be corrected. Customers may resist portable production for critical products and prefer the devil they know, and tier-based pricing is commercially unproven. The claims are dated so they can fail in public: P-09 (customers pay a premium for manufacturing optionality), P-11 (customers buy production tiers, not just production), and P-15 (manufacturing capacity works like cloud capacity). See the register →

← The loop · Phase 6 · Learning Phase 2 · Industrialization →
Phase 1 of 6 · Sourced from the working thesis v0.2 · Read the thesis →