What to Include for a Successful Cable Order
At iRex, we pride ourselves on our ability to get you a quote for your cable order as accurately as possible. For example, we often catch drawings where a particular gauge wire is paired with an incompatible crimp. In keeping with that ethos, we’ve written this article highlighting some of the most important things your iRex sales rep will go over with you prior to creating a quote. Whether you’re a buyer or engineer, use this as a resource to get the cable you need, whether you partner with us or not.
At iRex, we do everything we can to build our quotes at a competitive price and always with quality and service in mind.
The short answer on what you need to send to have an efficient and easy cable ordering process is as follows:
- Drawing with all the dimensions and tolerances included
- BOM/Bill material with manufacturing part numbers included
- Your preferred timeline
- Preferred quantities from prototype to production
- And samples of the cable to be quoted are always helpful (optional when the drawings/BOM’S are not complete)
Type of Order
First in the ordering and quoting process, our team looks at whether your cable assembly is completely new to iRex, a reorder, or an engineering change notice (ECN). Knowing where you are in the quoting process is essential for our team to assign your project to the right engineer and pull the right information from our records, potentially saving you time.
Timeline
When it comes to timing, our goal is to get quotes done within 3 to 5 business days. However, complexity can drastically impact the amount of time required to quote your cable assembly. We have seen instances where the quote process takes weeks. These factors are important to keep in mind when setting expectations for your team.
Target Pricing
At iRex, we do everything we can to build our quotes at a competitive price and always with quality and service in mind. That said, iRex strongly encourages our clients to provide target pricing and/or budget expectations. The more we know, the more we can help, employing our award-winning creativity in finding options to achieve your budget goals.
We work with the client to provide additional pictures and context so that our quoting and engineering time have the background to make informed decisions and build the cables you expect and need.
Controls
It’s a common saying that the two biggest pains for engineers are “cables and labels.” Our attention to details and a tight document control process set us apart. We aim to ease both of these headaches with conversations at the frontend of the quoting process. Things we are constantly on the lookout for are bills of materials (BOMs) that use manufacturer part numbers as opposed to client generated ones and whether the specified parts match.
We will often push for clarification on orders using terms that bring ambiguity. For example, asking for screws that are “hand tight” can vary from person to person and asking for the cable manufacturer to simply choose the type of wire to use adds time in potential back and forths.
With all this said, we routinely work with clients that have drawings in the “cocktail napkin” phase. In these cases, we work with the client to provide additional pictures and context so that our quoting and engineering team have the background to make informed decisions and build the cables you expect and need.
The last point to make regarding labelling relates to our internal ECN process. Our engineering team keeps strict revision control on all of our orders so we always make sure to dig into the “why” behind each change. Once we get that “why,” we pass that along to our team to make sure each revision is accounted for, even if the ECN doesn’t necessitate a full revision change on the client side.
Hopefully with this guide buyers and their teams can feel more confident entering the quoting process, but ready or not, feel free to reach out to our quoting team.
