Field note · Machine building
The major machine order
For a Swiss machine-tool builder, margin is set when a large order is accepted and made or lost in engineering and commissioning.
The situation
A Swiss builder of high-precision machine tools sells large, heavily configured machines to aerospace, energy and industrial customers. Each major order behaves like a project: engineering, build, commissioning and customer acceptance can take many months.
Price and delivery are agreed at the start. Whether the order earns its margin depends on what happens afterwards.
The decision that matters
When a major order is quoted and accepted, the company commits to a configuration, a scope and a delivery promise. Those choices determine much of the engineering effort and acceptance risk that follow.
How we approach it
Before the order is accepted, AI assembles the history of comparable projects: the engineering hours they really took, the changes requested along the way, the issues that delayed acceptance. It highlights the configurations and customer requirements that have repeatedly caused overruns.
The sales and operations leaders see, in one place, what similar orders actually cost to deliver, and which parts of the promise deserve a different price, scope or timeline.
Impact
The approach targets a single-digit million improvement in annual margin, protected on orders the company is already winning.