Made-to-order work is high-variation by nature: every job has different materials, finishing and approvals. The time goes on quoting, proofing, and finding out where a job actually is. We build the admin around the craft, not a replacement for it.
Five fixed-price automations for bespoke manufacturing, print and trade
These are the jobs we are asked for most often, written down with a
fixed scope so you know what you are buying before you buy it. Each is quoted as a
fixed price from £1,495, usually off the back of an
operations audit that says which of them is worth
doing first. Most of this is ordinary software automation with no AI in it at all.
What actually happens, in order — built from your enquiry channel through to the finished job, not a generic flowchart.
Solution 01
Enquiry to quote
How do you turn an emailed enquiry into a priced quote faster?
An enquiry arrives as a paragraph of email, sometimes a drawing, sometimes a phone note written on a job bag. Turning that into a specification and a price is a skilled job wrapped in twenty minutes of unskilled retyping.
What we build. The enquiry becomes a structured specification — materials, sizes, finishing, quantity — and is priced off your own rate card. You check and send. The rates stay yours, and where a rule lives only in somebody's head we tell you rather than guessing at it.
Not included, and said so before you buy
Building a rate card you do not have
Pricing decisions — the system applies your rules, it does not invent them
CAD or artwork work
When we would tell you not to bother. If every job is genuinely one of a kind and priced by judgement each time, automating the quote copies the judgement badly. We would rather write the rules down with you first.
Fixed price from £1,495, scope and exclusions in writing.
How do you stop jobs stalling while you wait for a proof to be approved?
A proof goes out and then nothing happens. The job sits, the slot goes unused, and finding out which proofs are outstanding means going through an inbox.
What we build. Proofs are tracked from sent to approved, chased on a schedule you set, and shown on one board. Silence is never treated as approval — an unanswered proof stays unanswered and visible.
Not included, and said so before you buy
Producing or amending the proof
Customer portal or login
Approving on the customer's behalf under any circumstances
When we would tell you not to bother. If you only run a handful of proofs a week and they come back same day, this is not where your hours are.
Fixed price from £1,495, scope and exclusions in writing.
How do you get an approved proof onto the shop floor without retyping it?
The approved proof already contains the specification. It then gets retyped into a job ticket, which is where the transcription errors come from — the wrong substrate, the wrong finish, the right job made twice.
What we build. The approved proof becomes a complete job ticket: specification, finishing, due date and a link to the artwork file. Nothing is retyped, so nothing is retyped wrongly.
Not included, and said so before you buy
Machine or RIP integration unless we have looked at it first
Changing your job numbering
Scheduling or capacity planning
When we would tell you not to bother. If your tickets are already generated from the same record as the proof, this is done.
Fixed price from £1,495, scope and exclusions in writing.
How do you see what is where on the shop floor without walking it?
The honest answer to “where is that job?” is usually a walk to the workshop and a conversation. That is fine once. It is expensive twelve times a day.
What we build. A wall screen showing what is where, what is late, and what is about to be. It reflects what has actually been scanned rather than what somebody meant to update, which is the difference between a board people trust and a board people ignore.
Not included, and said so before you buy
The screen and mounting hardware, unless quoted
Barcode scanners, unless quoted
Shop-floor process change — people have to scan for a board to be true
When we would tell you not to bother. A board fed by manual updates will drift within a fortnight and then mislead. If scanning is not realistic on your floor, we will say so rather than sell you a screen.
Fixed price from £1,495, scope and exclusions in writing.
How do you stop running out of the consumable that halts the job?
Stock control on raw materials is often fine. It is the consumables — the specific vinyl, the particular thread, the ink — that stop a job, and nobody counts them until one is missing.
What we build. The consumables that actually stop jobs get watched against usage, and you hear before the job stalls rather than when it does. Which items those are comes out of the audit, not out of a guess.
Not included, and said so before you buy
Placing orders on your behalf
Supplier price negotiation
Full stock control for every line you hold
When we would tell you not to bother. If you hold deep stock and have not stopped a job in a year, skip it.
Fixed price from £1,495, scope and exclusions in writing.
Every solution has a written scope and a written list of what it
excludes. The price is fixed before work starts. If we find the scope was wrong, we
requote before building rather than invoicing the difference afterwards. There is no
day rate, and no meter running.
How does Inferred automate quoting for made-to-order manufacturers?
An enquiry arrives as an email, a drawing or a phone note, and the system turns it into a structured specification priced off your own rate card. You check and send rather than start from a blank page.
The rates stay yours. We do not invent a pricing model — we read the one you already use, and where it lives in somebody's head rather than on paper, we say so before quoting the work.
Can local AI manage artwork intake and job tracking across a workshop?
Yes — proofs, approvals and job tickets are the part of the day most worth automating, because they are pure admin around skilled work. Approved artwork becomes a job ticket with nothing retyped, and the shop floor gets a status board that is scanned rather than guessed at.
Is our pricing data and customer list safe from AI providers?
Yes. Everything runs on your premises, on your network. Your rate card is your competitive position; it is not sent anywhere, and no third-party AI provider sees a line of it.
We’re a small team with no IT department. Is this for us?
Often, yes — small teams feel the retyping most because the same person does three jobs. We install it, point it at the files you choose, and half an hour of training is usually plenty.
But if the honest answer after an audit is that the hours are not there, that is the answer you will get in writing.
Not sure which one you need?
That is what the free fifteen-minute call is for — bring the job that
actually costs you time and we will tell you honestly whether it is one of
these five, something else, or not worth automating at all.