Automation of Quotation and Costing System for Venus Engineering Work

Abstract

What would happen to a hundred-year old industrial heavy company that was losing business not due to its products, but due to a spreadsheet? This is exactly the dilemma that this capstone project has tried to address. The company known as Venus Engineering Works was established in 1911, with its headquarters located in Gujarat, India. The company has one of the most interesting histories of manufacturing industrial valves in the country, having more than a century of engineering success, a record of zero quality complaints in 25 years, and a product range of applications in high-pressure, corrosive fluid, and precision critical. Venus Engineering Works is a name to reckon with in the industry. However, under this heritage of technical skill, there was a distinctly modern issue: each and every time a customer requested a price quotation, the internal department took nearly an hour to search through cost and raw material listings, overhead information, and margin rules just to produce one quotation. The problem statement for this project is that Venus Engineering Works does not have a time efficient and scalable system that can be used for calculating and producing valve quotes. The current process is manual and is divided into several manual documents and different spreadsheets, and requires about 55 to 65 minutes to prepare a quotation, and also sometimes leads to inaccurate and inconsistent results, which prevents the company from delivering information quickly to its customers, which can be crucial in a competitive market. To overcome this, we performed a mixed-methods style of conducting research. This was to be conducted qualitatively as well as quantitatively. We conducted in-depth interviews with the company founders and key decision-makers (such as Mr. Anay Mashruwala), followed by a focused group discussion with the operational team members to map the current process and find gaps in the system. This was succeeded by the design and testing of three technology solutions, including Lovable AI-powered application prototype, N8N-based workflow automation system, and finally, a Google Sheets composite cost sheet. The last solution was chosen because the client particularly requested the team to make it simpler and provide something that the team could use and maintain without any technical assistance. The revolution of the result was simple: the Google Sheets-based composite cost sheet cut quotation time from almost one hour to less than five minutes. This venture is an example amongst the most significant teachings of applied management that the most fancy solution is not always the best solution. It is the one that actually solves the problem efficiently and accurately.