The Library · By industry

AI agents for job shops and precision machining

What a custom agent looks like inside a make-to-order machine shop or fabricator — the ten roles in your language, and what each one plugs into in a shop running E2, JobBOSS, ProShop or Global Shop alongside QuickBooks.

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A job shop lives and dies on quoting and on paperwork nobody bills for. Every order starts as somebody else's drawing and somebody else's part number, has to be priced against a routing that exists mostly in an estimator's head, and ends with documentation — certifications, first article reports, material certs — that the customer requires and no one gets paid for producing. The ERP holds jobs and routings well. What it does not hold is the incoming RFQ, the customer's portal, the supplier's quote, or the quality paperwork, and those four gaps are where a shop's office labor concentrates.

What an agent plugs into here

The honest version of "does it integrate with my software." These are the systems this industry actually runs on, and what each one means for a build.

E2 Shop / JobBOSSShop ERP

The most common system of record in small and mid-size shops — quotes, jobs, routings, scheduling, time and job costing. Data access ranges from a documented interface to direct database reads depending on version and deployment, so this is the first thing to establish.

ProShop ERPShop ERP with quality built in

Notable because quality and document control live inside the system rather than beside it, which changes what a quality-facing agent has to do and usually reduces it.

Global Shop / EpicorShop ERP

The larger end. More capable, more structured, and more likely to involve a formal integration path.

Mastercam / Fusion 360 / SolidWorksCAM and CAD

Where the part is programmed. Mostly a source of files and metadata rather than an integration target, but revision level matters enormously and is worth reading rather than trusting.

Customer supplier portalsOrder intake

Larger customers push purchase orders, forecasts and drawing revisions through their own portals rather than sending them. No two are alike, and checking them is a daily manual chore in most shops.

QuickBooksAccounting

Where the money lives. The disagreement between quoted cost, actual job cost and what accounting says is the recurring reporting problem in this industry.

Quality documentationISO 9001 / AS9100

First article reports, material certifications, certificates of conformance, non-conformance records and corrective actions. Frequently a folder structure plus a spreadsheet, and audited annually against how well it is maintained.

Material suppliersPurchasing

Metal service centers and distributors quoting by email and phone. Pricing moves, quotes expire, and comparing three of them on the same cut list is a manual exercise done under time pressure.

Shop floor data collectionTime and production

Terminals or tablets capturing labor against operations. The quality of this data determines whether job costing means anything, and it is usually the weakest input in the shop.

The ten agents, in your language

Each of these is a real build, not a feature of a product you already pay for. Follow one through to see how it works in general.

The Follow-Up

Nothing you are owed gets dropped.

  • Quotes sent to buyers who have gone quiet, with the RFQ context attached
  • Customer purchase orders promised verbally and never issued
  • Supplier quotes on material that have not come back before your quote expires
  • Past due invoices on customers who route everything through a portal

The Intake

Whatever arrives, in whatever format, becomes a clean record.

  • RFQs arriving as emailed PDFs with drawings attached
  • Purchase orders that have to be pulled from a customer portal daily
  • Drawing revisions issued without anyone saying which parts they affect
  • Supplier order confirmations and delivery dates

The Drafter

Writes the recurring document from your own past work.

  • The quote, built from your own routings for similar parts you have run before
  • Certificates of conformance and first article documentation packets
  • The response to a customer's supplier quality survey

The Watcher

Knows what expires, renews or comes due — and says so first.

  • Customer purchase order release dates and forecast commitments
  • Calibration due dates on gauges and inspection equipment
  • Certification renewals — ISO, AS9100, welder qualifications
  • Quote expiration dates against material pricing that has moved

The Answer Desk

Answers from your own records, not from the internet.

  • "Have we run this part before, and what did it cost?" — answered from job history
  • What revision the customer is currently on, and what changed
  • What this customer requires on their quality paperwork

The Scribe

The conversation becomes the record, without anyone typing it up.

  • The customer visit or capability review becomes a record and follow-up actions
  • The shop floor discussion about a problem part becomes a corrective action draft

The Reporter

Assembles the recurring report from systems that do not talk.

  • Quoted versus actual cost by part, so estimating learns from what happened
  • On-time delivery by customer, assembled without anyone building it
  • Machine and work center utilization against what was scheduled

The Reconciler

Matches two sets of records and queues only the exceptions.

  • Supplier invoices against purchase orders and receiving records
  • Shop floor time against jobs and operations
  • Customer purchase order pricing against what your quote actually said

The Connector

Two systems that do not talk, now talking.

  • The shop ERP and QuickBooks, which disagree on work in progress
  • Time collection and payroll
  • Customer portal orders flowing into the ERP without retyping

The Gatekeeper

Applies your rules, escalates only what needs judgment.

  • Whether a quote below your margin floor gets released
  • Whether a non-conformance can be dispositioned use-as-is or needs the customer
  • Credit terms and order release for a new customer

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