For small manufacturers' front offices
Customer orders entered and acknowledged without retyping every PDF
Lunan sets up AI in your front office that reads customer purchase orders and quote requests from email, drafts the sales order, quote or reply, and holds it for your team to check and send. Then we train your people to run it.
Only 1 in 10 manufacturers have built AI into daily operations, and nearly 7 in 10 would join or consider joining a structured AI pilot within six months. The survey covers manufacturers of all sizes. Source: Foundation for Manufacturing Excellence, Jul 2026
What gets in the way
Customer purchase orders get retyped by hand
Every customer sends a PDF, spreadsheet or email in a different layout. Someone keys in part numbers, revisions, quantities, prices and dates, and the pile grows on busy weeks or when that person is out.
Quote requests wait for the one person who knows the prices
Requests for quote sit in the inbox while your estimator is on the floor or buried in other work. Prices live in old quotes, a spreadsheet and someone's head, so nobody else can answer fast.
"Where's my order?" emails eat the afternoon
Your customer service person looks up job status screen by screen and writes the same reply again and again, while acknowledgments for new orders go out late.
What we set up
Customer purchase orders to draft sales orders and acknowledgments
AI reads each customer purchase order that lands in your orders inbox, pulls the customer, part numbers, revisions, quantities, prices and requested dates, and matches them to your part numbers. It checks price and date against your last quote and lead time, flags any mismatch, and drafts the sales order for your system plus the acknowledgment. Your order-entry person reviews the flags and approves.
Before: retyping every PDF and catching price errors at invoicing. After: reviewing a filled-in draft with the mismatches already highlighted.
Quote drafts from emailed requests for quote
For catalog and configured products, AI pulls what the customer is asking for, finds your last quote for the same part, applies your price list, quantity breaks and lead-time rules, and drafts the reply. Your estimator sets the final price and sends it. Drawing-based machining quotes are covered on our machine shop page.
Before: the request waits until the estimator digs through old quotes. After: a draft with the price history attached is waiting for review.
Order status replies
When a customer asks where an order stands, AI looks up the order (read-only) and drafts a plain reply with the current status and ship date. Your team edits it or sends it as is.
Before: digging through screens for each email. After: a drafted answer waiting in the queue.
How it works
- 1
Free conversation
You walk us through how an order moves from your customer's email to your shop floor, and which ERP (enterprise resource planning) system you run. You get a short written list of which steps AI could take off your desk and which it should not touch.
- 2
Test on your own past orders
Before anything touches a live order, we run the workflow on a batch of your past purchase orders and compare it line by line with what your team actually entered. You see the accuracy and decide whether to go ahead.
- 3
Build, train and hand over
We set up the workflow in your inbox and your order system, with a review queue so nothing is entered or sent without approval. We train your front-office team to review and correct it, then you choose whether we keep watching it monthly.
Ways to work together
Each is scoped and quoted after the conversation.
Learn
Owners and office staff who want to know where AI fits before buying anything
- Live workshop for your front-office team
- Exercises on your own purchase orders, quotes and status emails
- A short list of safe first uses for your shop
- A one-page AI rule sheet covering customer drawings and export-controlled data
Build
Shops with an order desk that are ready to stop retyping customer purchase orders
- Back-test on your past purchase orders before go-live
- Orders inbox set up to produce draft sales orders and acknowledgments
- Price, revision and date mismatch checks against your quotes
- A review queue so a person approves every order
- Staff training on review and correction
Run
Teams that want it kept accurate as customers and their forms change
- Monthly accuracy check and miss report
- Fixes when a customer changes their purchase order layout
- Part-number crosswalk and rule updates
- A monthly review call
Guardrails
AI drafts; your people decide. Nothing is entered in your system or sent to a customer until someone on your team approves it, and any price, revision or date that doesn't match your quote is flagged for a decision. Customer drawings and files covered by customer contract limits stay out of any workflow those limits don't allow. If you hold technical data under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (22 CFR Subchapter M), it stays out of AI tools unless your export compliance lead approves the specific setup in writing; whether a service meets the encrypted-storage conditions in 22 CFR 120.54(a)(5) is their call, not ours.
Questions
Will this replace my order-entry or customer service staff?
It is built to take the retyping and lookups off their plate, not to run without them. Someone still reviews every order, quote and customer reply. The hours usually go to expediting, quoting and calling customers back.
What software does it work with?
It starts in your email (Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace) and drafts into your order system. Shops we expect to see run JobBOSS², Epicor Kinetic, NetSuite, Katana, MRPeasy or QuickBooks. We confirm during the free read whether your system accepts orders through a connection or an import file. If it accepts neither, we produce a paste-ready draft and tell you that up front. We don't claim a direct connection to any system until we have tested it on yours.
Doesn't my ERP already have AI for this?
Check the fine print. ECI's April 2026 announcement for JobBOSS² covers an AI assistant and matching of vendor invoices (bills you pay), not customer orders. Epicor and NetSuite offer customer-order automation through add-ons and partner apps. If one of those fits you better than a build, we will say so.
What happens to our customer drawings, pricing and controlled data?
They stay in your email and your systems, on business accounts set not to train on your data where the vendor offers that setting. You get a written list of every place your data goes. ITAR-controlled drawings stay out unless your export compliance lead approves the setup in writing.
How do we know it works before we commit?
We test on a batch of your past purchase orders first and show you line-by-line results next to what your team entered. You set the accuracy bar before you see the results. If it misses, you have spent days, not a software contract.
Reading list
- AI in a Small Manufacturer's Front Office: What It Can and Can't Do
A plain guide to the three front-office jobs AI handles well in a small manufacturer, the limits, what your ERP already ships, and a six-step way to test it.
- Customer Purchase Orders to Sales Orders with AI: A Step-by-Step Guide by ERP
The six steps of AI order entry (inbox, extraction, matching, quote check, draft, approval), what each common ERP offers, and how to back-test on your own POs.
- AI Quote Drafting for Small Manufacturers: Buy a Tool, Use Your ERP, or Build Your Own?
Separates drawing-based quoting from catalog RFQ quoting, lists the data a quote draft needs, and compares four routes with the questions to ask each vendor.
- Customer Drawings, Pricing and ITAR: How to Set AI Rules in a Small Manufacturer's Office
A three-bucket way to classify front-office data, the ITAR encrypted-storage carve-out in plain words, an eight-line AI rule sheet and the vendor questions to ask in writing.
- What Customer Order Entry Really Costs a Small Manufacturer, and How to Decide on AI
A five-step decision method: log a week of order work, price it with the BLS order-clerk wage, compare published option costs, pick by company size, and set a stop rule.
See what comes off your front office
Start a free conversation. Tell us how orders and quote requests reach you and which system you run, and get a short written list of the work AI could take off your desk, plus what it should leave alone.