AI for Canadian CNC shops and precision manufacturers.
Email-to-quote, CAD-to-quote, shop-floor reasoning agents. Shipped in 100 days, integrated with the ERP and CAD tools you already run. Founder-led delivery, bilingual EN/FR, NGen AI4M and Mitacs funding pulled in where eligible.
- Quoting agent shipped in 21 to 45 days. Reads the inbound RFQ, opens the CAD attachment, generates the quote PDF, queues it for estimator approval.
- Designed to capture 3 to 5x more incoming RFQs. Bottleneck moves from estimator hours to estimator review.
- Works on the ERP you already run. First-tier scope on E2, JobBOSS, ProShop, Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC. Honest week-one spike for Fusion, ECI M1, Global Shop, Epicor.
- NGen AI4M Challenge Program funding pulled in by ThriveAI on eligible scopes (30 to 50% cost share).
The four shippable agents for a CNC shop
In priority order, by ROI in Canadian precision manufacturing in 2026.
1. Email-to-quote agent
The agent reads inbound RFQ emails, opens STEP / IGES / X_T / PDF attachments, extracts geometry and tolerances, applies your shop's machining-time formulas, looks up current material cost from your vendor sheets, generates a quote PDF, and queues for estimator review. Design target: 80 percent of estimator quoting time recovered, validated in shadow mode before commit. Built in 21 to 45 days.
2. CAD-to-quote (vision pipeline)
For shops that get drawings as PDFs rather than CAD files: vision-LLM agent that parses dimensions, callouts, GD&T, notes, surface finish requirements, and turns them into a structured estimate. Combines with the email-to-quote agent for end-to-end coverage. Shipped in 30 to 60 days.
3. Shop-floor reasoning agent
Lives in the production team's hands (phone, tablet, kiosk). Answers questions about job status, tooling, setup notes, prior job history. Bilingual EN/FR for shops with francophone staff. Shipped in 30 to 45 days.
4. Vendor and material-cost auto-refresh
Agent monitors vendor portals and emailed price lists, updates the material cost table the quoting agent draws from. Eliminates the "we quoted at last month's prices" leak. Shipped in 21 to 30 days, often bundled into the quoting agent build.
What ships, week by week
- Wk 1-2Operations diagnostic. Two days on site (or remote if preferred). We read your inbox, your ERP, your quoting workflow, your win-rate data. Output: a one-page ranking of the 3 to 5 highest-ROI agents for your specific shop.
- Wk 3-4Workflow scoped, integration tested. Pilot agent design locked. CAD format coverage tested against your last 50 RFQs. ERP integration spike completed. Honest go/no-go decision before the build phase.
- Wk 5-8First agent built. Live with estimator in shadow mode (agent generates quote, estimator generates quote, we compare outputs). Iterate until the agent is within tolerance.
- Wk 9-12Production launch. Agent goes live for incoming RFQs. Estimator reviews and sends. Eval framework runs nightly. Quote-accuracy and quote-turnaround metrics tracked.
- Wk 13-15Operator-team handoff. Runbook, eval framework, integration credentials, monitoring dashboards. We exit. Your team owns it.
What this is, specifically
- Implementation, not advisory. The back-half invoice ties to a shipped, integrated agent generating quotes from real RFQs.
- Founder-delivered. Derik is personally on every CNC engagement. No junior staffing leverage. No bench rotation.
- Bilingual EN/FR. Quebec French operator comfort, francophone staff support, agents output in EN or FR.
- Your CAD files stay on your infrastructure. No upload of proprietary IP to third-party SaaS unless you explicitly authorize it.
- Vendor-neutral. We do not resell CloudNC, CADMatch, Tacton, Salesforce CPQ, or any quoting platform. We pick the right tool, integrate, and document.
- Operator-trained handoff. Your team owns the system after week 15. We do not build a dependency.
Canadian funding pulled in (where eligible)
We package and submit the funding applications. Your operations team does not run that process.
- NGen AI4M Challenge Program. Up to 40 to 50% of project cost on eligible advanced-manufacturing scopes ($1.5M to $8M project bands; agent builds anchor smaller scopes via consortium pattern).
- Mitacs Accelerate / Elevate. 50% cost-share on research-anchored scopes with a Canadian university partner.
- NRC IRAP. Labour cost share up to 75-80% on eligible AI builds; advisory time included.
- Provincial top-ups. Quebec (Investissement Quebec), Ontario (OCI), Alberta (Alberta Innovates) where the shop qualifies.
ERPs and tools the agent integrates with
- ERPs: E2 Shop System, JobBOSS (Exact JobBOSS2), ProShop, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, custom Excel and Access shop databases
- CAD format coverage: STEP, IGES, X_T (Parasolid), SolidWorks, Fusion 360, PDF technical drawings (vision-LLM)
- Quoting platforms (integration, not resale): CADMatch, CloudNC's API, ProShop quoting
- Email and CRM: Microsoft 365 / Outlook, Google Workspace, HubSpot, Pipedrive
- Document generation: PandaDoc, DocuSign, native PDF templating
Common questions
What does AI quoting actually do for a CNC shop?
Turns a 90-minute manual quote into a 5 to 10 minute estimator review. Captures 3 to 5x more incoming RFQs. The bottleneck moves from estimator capacity to estimator review.
Can the agent read CAD files?
Yes. STEP, IGES, X_T natively via CAD parsing toolkits. PDFs and drawings via vision-LLM. If your file types are unusual, we tell you in week one before committing.
What does it cost?
Pilot quoting agent: CAD 35,000 to 60,000. Full multi-family quoting platform: CAD 80,000 to 180,000. NGen AI4M can cover 30 to 50% on eligible scopes; we file the application.
Will it work with our ERP?
ERP coverage scoped on call: E2, JobBOSS, ProShop, Dynamics 365 BC, custom Excel and Access shop databases. For Fusion Operations, ECI M1, Global Shop Solutions, Epicor: week-one integration spike before we commit.
Will the agent replace our estimator?
No. The agent is designed to move the estimator from quote production to quote review and customer relationship. The design pattern is that the estimator becomes the production scheduler over 6 to 12 months as the team finally lands the RFQ volume the estimator could see but could never quote in time.
Related reading
Pick one quote you'd love to land faster. We scope live.
Thirty minutes with Derik. You leave with the highest-ROI AI agent scoped for your shop: what it does, what it costs, and what ships first inside 100 days. Bring one recent RFQ to make it concrete.
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