How Slow Quoting Undermines U.S. Machine Shops’ Competitive Edge

For U.S. manufacturers, proximity should be a competitive advantage, says Alex Huckstepp, co‑founder and Chief Commercial Officer of Uptool. Yet many small and medium domestic machine shops lose work to overseas suppliers, despite being closer to their customers.

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The core issue isn’t a lack of technology or expertise; it’s how quickly shops can respond with a quote.

“Speed is as important as price when competing with Asia,” says co‑founder Benny Buller, Chief Executive Officer. “Customers can now receive a complete quote in 10 days from Vietnam or China. Those suppliers have become far more agile, delivering results in record time.”

Uptool co‑founders Benny Buller (CEO) and Alex Huckstepp (COO). Source: Uptool (All Images)

Buller and Huckstepp bring years of manufacturing experience, having worked at industrial OEMs that sourced parts for their products. Their own supply‑chain challenges highlighted a persistent pain point: “I’d love to work with my local machine shops, but they take a week to give a quote and often 3–4 weeks to deliver a simple part. I get a same‑day quote from China and the part arrives in a week.”

Slow quotes stem from manual processes, limited digitalization, and understaffing. Many U.S. shops build a backlog of orders as a safety net, which protects individual businesses but erodes the collective competitiveness of domestic manufacturers.

In February 2026, Uptool emerged from stealth mode with a cloud‑based AI platform designed specifically for small and mid‑size machine shops and metal fabricators. While the platform offers multiple capabilities, its initial focus is on automating and accelerating the quoting process so that shops can handle more RFQs faster and win more work.

A Changing Landscape for Machine‑Shop Quoting

The challenge isn’t limited to small U.S. shops; it reflects a broader industry bottleneck: speed. Early in his engineering career, Buller built a reputation for sourcing parts overnight by working directly with suppliers, a demanding and exhausting process that few can replicate.

Fast turnaround is critical because shorter lead times enable more iterations and higher‑quality products. When a supply chain can’t deliver quickly, innovation stalls and project timelines slip.

Buller’s experience at additive‑manufacturing firm Velo3D further confirmed this pattern. “Customers often sought metal 3D printing not for its design flexibility, but because traditional casting and preform orders dragged out to a quarter‑year cycle, even for parts that could be produced in a week.”

These insights led to Uptool’s founding philosophy: “The biggest opportunity in part manufacturing isn’t new technology, but smarter software that streamlines information flow and decision making.”

“Zero‑Configuration” AI Software

After months of conversations with over 40 machine shops, Buller and Huckstepp identified quoting as the most tangible bottleneck and chose AI as the solution. The first prototype was coded in roughly 120 hours and beta‑tested with three businesses.

One beta shop saw a quote that would have taken three days turned around overnight, securing a large order they might have otherwise lost.

Uptool is “zero‑configuration,” requiring no upfront setup or detailed information. A new user can launch the software in under an hour, start processing quotes immediately, and gradually refine settings as the AI learns common corrections.

Within a week, shops are quoting in under two minutes per part.

An AI Administrative Assistant for RFQ Processing

Uptool connects to a shop’s quoting inbox. Incoming messages and attachments are parsed automatically, extracting key customer intent and part specifications. The system identifies repeat customers, associates new RFQs with existing jobs, and creates new quotes swiftly.

Incoming RFQs populate the Uptool dashboard, grouping assemblies and breaking down each part by process. (click to expand)

Huckstepp explains, “We auto‑organize bills of material, drawings, and CAD files, so the manufacturer receives all relevant information in one place. Assemblies are de‑composed into discrete parts with each part number clearly labeled.”

All emails linked to an RFQ are viewable directly in the dashboard, eliminating program‑switching.

From there, Uptool auto‑calculates estimated material and finishing costs, handles simple internal processes, and prompts the user to input any remaining steps—setup, programming, CNC milling, etc. The software applies shop‑specific rates and markups, generating a complete quote with price and lead time in minutes.

“We’re reducing quoting from 15–20 minutes per part to about a minute and a half,” Huckstepp says.

Humans in a Faster Loop

While Uptool’s AI is trained on real quoting data, it remains a human‑in‑the‑loop system. The tool acts as an administrative assistant, handling intake and organization so that the manufacturer can focus on nuanced decisions.

“We haven’t yet automated runtime calculations, machine selection, or tool availability—tasks that are highly complex and vary by shop,” Huckstepp notes. “But everything else is automated.”

Uptool streamlines RFQ processing, allowing manufacturers to estimate a few key details while the AI applies rates and finalizes the quote.

Implementation is free of upfront costs; customers pay a monthly subscription scaled to their business size. The AI currently excels with small, high‑mix machine and fabrication shops, but Uptool is expanding support to include finishing, stamping, casting, additive manufacturing, and forging.

Looking ahead, Uptool plans to extend beyond quoting, adding an end‑to‑end operating system: enhanced CRM, job tracking, purchasing, inventory, machine monitoring, scheduling, and shipping. These features will further accelerate shop operations and competitiveness.

“Time is the most valuable resource, even more so than money,” Buller says. “Shortening lead times to beat overseas suppliers is a game‑changer.”

“Quoting is the critical bottleneck between customer and supplier. Solving it first unlocks everything else,” Huckstepp emphasizes. “If you’re not winning enough work, the rest becomes moot.”