For Custom Machine Builders & Special-Purpose Machinery
Every machine is custom.
Every quote shouldn't be.
The first question on every RFQ is the same: have we built this before? Mavlon answers it from your own past jobs - with confidence scores, modular reuse, and long-lead component flags - in hours, not weeks.
NDA-first · 3 past machines to start · Pilot in one week
The 70 / 30 truth
Most "custom" machines are 70% modular.
The frame, the drive train, the indexer, the safety guard package, the HMI shell, the control cabinet, the standard pneumatics - they carry over from your past builds. You've designed them a hundred times. The risk doesn't live there.
The 30% that's genuinely customer-specific - the workhead, the tooling, the vision system tuned to a new part, the cycle balance for a new throughput target - that's where every senior engineer spends their judgement. And that's exactly where mistakes get multi-million.
Mavlon helps you quote both halves with confidence. The 70% gets recalled in seconds from your library. The 30% gets flagged for review with the closest historical analogue surfaced - even when there isn't one.
One drawing. One spec.
The same question: have we done this?
Senior engineer recognizes the dial-table architecture. Cabinet, HMI, pneumatics - known. Workhead, vision, pick robot - new. The quote slows down right there.
The feasibility verdict
the moment you upload.
The three quote-killers in custom machinery.
Custom machine builders don't lose on simple machines they've done a hundred times. They lose on the three blind spots that hide inside every new RFQ - the ones that don't surface until detail design has already started.
The long-lead components that decide schedules.
Mavlon cross-checks every machine you quote against current supplier lead times - pulled from your past PO data and live supplier feeds. Slip risk gets flagged in the quote, not in detail design.
| Component | Common Suppliers | Lead (typ.) | Slip risk surfaced by Mavlon |
|---|---|---|---|
| Servo Drives & Motors | Siemens · Bosch Rexroth · Yaskawa | 16–22 wks | Cross-checked against your last 12 POs; flagged if quote assumes <16 wks |
| High-Precision Indexers | Weiss · CDS Manufacturing · Stelron | 14–20 wks | Recurring slip vector - Mavlon surfaces alternative spec families |
| Vision Systems & Cameras | Cognex · Keyence · Basler · Allied Vision | 8–14 wks | Spec match against your library; integration risk scored from past builds |
| Robots & Cobots | FANUC · KUKA · ABB · UR · Yaskawa | 10–16 wks | Payload & reach cross-checked against new product spec |
| Custom-Cast Frames | In-house · Local fabricator | 6–12 wks | Modular reuse check - >65% of frames in your library carry forward |
| PLC & HMI Hardware | Siemens · Rockwell · B&R · Beckhoff | 4–10 wks | Carries over for >80% of builds - Mavlon flags the rare new spec |
The same custom-machine RFQ.
Two realities.
| Your Engineering Today | With Mavlon | |
|---|---|---|
| RFQ-to-quote turnaround | 4–8 weeks per RFQ | Hours to a day |
| "Have we built this before?" | Senior engineer's memory | Vector recall + confidence score |
| Modular reuse calculation | Senior eyeball, hopeful | Auto-mapped against your BOM library |
| Customer-specific risk flag | Found in detail design | Surfaced at quote time |
| Long-lead component check | Procurement called after PO | Cross-checked vs. past POs & live feeds |
| Process capability vs. past | Best guess | Past Cpk vs. spec target, per feature |
| Margin band confidence | ±20% gut | ±5–10% backed by historical outcomes |
| Senior engineer dependency | Every RFQ from scratch | Junior drafts; senior approves the new 30% |
| Where IP lives | In retiring engineers' heads | On your server, searchable, permanent |
Three artifacts. Per RFQ.
What lands on your estimator's desk the day the customer's packet arrives - ready to defend in a quote review and tweak in your existing templates.
- Confidence score with rationale
- Closest past builds with outcomes
- Process capability gap analysis
- Spec-driven clarification questions
- BOM modular-reuse percentage
- Long-lead component flags + alternatives
- Customer-specific module list
- Supplier risk against past PO data
- Module-level BOP & BOE
- Material + labor + assembly cost
- ±Band per module + composite
- Export to .xlsx / your estimating tool
A library that compounds
across every machine you build.
The first machine you load teaches the system one segment. The twentieth makes you faster than anyone trying to enter your market. The fiftieth becomes a moat no competitor can shortcut.
Your senior designer takes four weeks to quote one custom machine today. With Mavlon, the same head supports four - and the fifth one doesn't make her tired. That's how custom-machine quoting compounds.
Reference Engagement
Montanstahl Group, Switzerland
How a multi-site Swiss engineering group answered "can we make this?" in seconds instead of days
Montanstahl's estimators across Switzerland, Germany, and Italy spent thousands of hours per year on the same question - "have we done this kind of profile / process / spec before, and at what cost?" - by digging through old quotes and tribal memory.
Mavlon embedded into their existing workflow, parsed each new packet on arrival, and surfaced the closest past jobs with prices, capabilities, and outcomes. The same memory-first quoting motion generalizes directly to custom machine builders across packaging, medical, semi, and aerospace tooling verticals.
"What previously required emails, phone calls, and digging through old RFQs is now answered in seconds for standard and semi-standard cases."
Read the full case studyEvery customer thinks their machine is unique. Every engineer knows it's 70% the same as the last one. The job isn't to build something new every time. The job is to know precisely which 30% is actually new - and to know it on the first day, not the eightieth.
Head of Engineering - Custom Machine Builder
Embeds in Outlook · Exports to SolidWorks PDM · SAP · Epicor · Excel - or your estimating template. ISO 13485 / FDA 21 CFR 11 ready for medical device builds.
Three past machines.
One week to pilot.
See feasibility in hours.
Sign NDA. Share three past machines from one segment - packaging, medical, semi, aerospace tooling, whichever you build most. We stand up the memory layer on your server in a week. 80% accuracy target on real RFQs. Your senior engineers approve the 30%.
NDA first. Your data, your server. IP transfers to you on day one.