Skip to content

Supplier RFQ from New Project BoM

Example prompt: "When a new project's bill of materials lands in our 'BoMs Awaiting Quote' Drive folder, group the components by preferred supplier from our 'Suppliers Master' tab, and draft an RFQ email to each supplier with the line items, our part numbers, and the needed-by date."

The Problem

A new project means a new BoM, and a new BoM means sending the same RFQ to the right suppliers — except 'the right suppliers' is one cell in a spreadsheet that the project engineer has to look up line by line, and 'the same RFQ' is four separate emails that say almost the same thing with the lines reshuffled. The project lead spends half a day on it before the quoting clock has even started, and the deadlines for the supplier replies are not tracked anywhere so the chase is from memory.

How GloriaMundo Solves It

We build a workflow that watches a Drive folder for a new BoM file. An integration step opens the BoM and reads every line. A code step looks each SKU up in the suppliers master to find the preferred supplier, and groups the lines by supplier so each one gets a consolidated RFQ. An LLM step drafts the email in our voice — careful to ask for unit price, lead time, and MOQ, careful not to reveal our target unit cost or the end customer. The drafts land in Gmail for the project lead to review and send. The send detection writes the deadlines into an RFQ tracker. When the supplier replies, the reply parser writes the quoted prices and lead times into a quotes received tab. A scheduled summary at each RFQ deadline posts the comparison view to Slack so the project lead can decide per line. Glass Box preview shows every drafted RFQ and the tracker rows before anything goes out.

Example Workflow Steps

  1. Trigger (integration): A new BoM Google Sheet appears in the 'BoMs Awaiting Quote' Google Drive folder, with a filename matching '[project_code] — BoM v[n].xlsx'.
  2. Step 1 (integration): Read the BoM rows and look up the project's needed-by date, customer name, and project lead from the 'Projects' tab.
  3. Step 2 (code): For each BoM line, look up the preferred supplier AND any alternate suppliers in the 'Suppliers Master' tab; mark lines with no supplier on file for manual review; fan out so each line goes to every listed supplier (preferred + alternates), then group by supplier_email so each supplier gets one consolidated RFQ across the SKUs we're asking them to quote on.
  4. Step 3 (llm): Draft a Gmail to each supplier in our voice with the consolidated line table, the needed-by date, and the three-working-day reply deadline; omit our target unit cost and the customer name.
  5. Step 4 (integration): Generate one rfq_batch_id for the run (project code + BoM version + timestamp to the second + 6-character random suffix — matches the example prompt's collision-avoidance format so retries within the same second still produce distinct ids). Append one row per (BoM line × supplier) to the 'RFQ Tracker' tab carrying the rfq_batch_id, supplier_email, is_preferred flag, and status 'Drafted'; on the send event, flip to 'Sent' keyed on (rfq_batch_id, supplier_email).
  6. Step 5 (integration): When a supplier reply arrives carrying the rfq_batch_id in its subject, dedupe on the inbound Gmail message-id (skip the entire reply if a row for that message-id already exists for this rfq_batch_id + supplier_email — protects against webhook retries and replays). For new message-ids, ALWAYS append a new row per line to 'Quotes Received' (rfq_batch_id, supplier_email, sku, gmail_message_id, revision_number, received_at, unit_price, lead_time, MOQ) so revised quotes from the same supplier preserve the prior version as audit trail; comparison views read the highest revision_number per (rfq_batch_id, supplier_email, sku).
  7. Step 6 (integration): At each RFQ deadline, post a Slack summary in #procurement comparing quotes per line and listing any supplier still owing a reply.

Integrations Used

  • Google Drive — the BoMs-awaiting-quote folder and the project documentation folders
  • Google Sheets — the BoM itself, the suppliers master, the projects tab, the RFQ tracker, the quotes received tab
  • Gmail — drafts and sends the supplier RFQs and tracks the replies
  • Slack — the #procurement channel where the project lead sees the comparison at the deadline

Who This Is For

The project lead or sourcing engineer at a small contract manufacturer, fabricator, or assembly shop — anywhere a new job means a new BoM with twenty to two hundred line items and four to ten regular suppliers to canvass.

Time & Cost Saved

A 100-line BoM takes a careful project lead three to four hours to RFQ properly — looking up suppliers, building four supplier-specific tables, drafting the emails, recording the deadlines. This workflow turns it into thirty minutes of reviewing the drafts and clicking send. The bigger gain is the comparison view at the deadline — fewer 'forgot to chase the bearing supplier' moments and fewer accepted-by-default quotes because the comparable was not on the page.