SAM AI · Smart Assistive Manufacturing
SAM AI is Smart Shop Floor’s manufacturing AI layer for high-mix, low-volume businesses. Four specialists prepare estimates, schedules and sales administration, and connect business knowledge. Your people stay in control.
A generic chatbot can tell you to get a subcontract quote. SAM identifies the work, drafts the RFQs and brings the returned quotes into costing. That’s the difference between an answer and a job moving forward.
Four manufacturing specialists
Each specialist knows its part. The value is how they carry the job forward together.
SAM Estimator
Trained on your shop-specific historical quotes, SAM prepares estimates using your materials, processes and estimating approach.
Your estimator reviews and corrects the draft. Those corrections improve future estimates.
SAM Scheduler
SAM brings available capacity and approved subcontractor lead times into production scheduling. The handoff from a customer-approved quote carries the context your planner needs.
Your planner retains oversight of the production plan and changes to it.
SAM Sales Admin
SAM reads incoming requests and prepares follow-on work: draft quotes, invoices, purchase orders and subcontractor RFQ emails. Returned subcontract quotes are brought together in project costing for comparison.
Draft quotes and RFQs prepared for review. Customer approval before the scheduling handoff.
SAM Knowledge Worker
SAM helps your team find and use information across drawings, quotes, jobs and procedures. It connects business systems, SharePoint, OneDrive and email to support estimating, production and customer service.
Connected sources depend on your setup and access arrangements. Your team reviews information before acting.
SAM Knowledge Worker
SAM Knowledge Worker helps your team find and use information across your drawings, quotes, jobs and procedures. It connects the systems, files and correspondence your team relies on, across the whole job lifecycle.
Connected sources depend on your setup. Discuss which systems and access arrangements suit your business with our team.
Find the past job, the customer’s drawing revision and the supplier thread behind a price—so the next estimate starts from what your business already knows.
Give planners and supervisors quicker answers on job history, specifications and process notes held across documents and systems, instead of chasing them by phone.
Help your team answer order, delivery and job questions with the context from quotes, correspondence and records already on file.
SAM surfaces and prepares; your people check and decide. Answers and drafts remain subject to human review before they reach a customer or commit the business.
The connected job story
A fabricated-bracket enquiry needs zinc plating. Follow the work from draft estimate to production plan.
An enquiry for fabricated brackets arrives with a drawing. SAM prepares the take-off using your shop’s historical quotes and flags the outside processing.
Take-off, nesting, procurement BoM and labour build the draft price. SAM identifies subcontract work and automatically emails the estimator a draft-ready notification with a pricing summary, supporting documents and a review link. Items needing manual attention are flagged.
SAM drafts the RFQ emails for zinc plating, with quantities, specifications and the required date ready for your team to review.
Returned subcontract quotes sit together in project costing, with lead times alongside price. Your team decides which option meets the job requirements.
With the subcontract choice reviewed and the quote checked, your team issues it. The customer’s approval becomes the handoff into production planning.
SAM carries the approved subcontractor lead time into capacity-based scheduling, alongside cutting, folding and workshop operations.
Illustrative example throughout. Figures, subcontractor options and job screens demonstrate the workflow, not a customer outcome or a live product screen.
The architecture behind the action
Your data and manufacturing rules give the specialists context. Integration connects the tools. Human approval keeps the authority with you.
History → take-off → draft pricing
Subcontract costs stay with the job.
Capacity + approved lead times
A production plan grounded in reality.
Instructions → progress → actuals
Live shop-floor feedback closes the loop.
Practical safeguards
Drawings, pricing and production decisions matter. The right setup is a conversation about your shop’s data, access requirements and approval responsibilities.
Discuss your deploymentAustralian data and backups are hosted in Australian data centres.
Discuss private-cloud connectivity and access requirements with our team. This is not a claim of on-premises LLM inference.
Multi-tenant, multi-geography capability supports deployment conversations across sites and operating regions.
Pricing, RFQ sending, supplier selection and purchasing remain subject to human review and approval.
Built on a real shop-floor foundation
SAM builds on the Smart Shop Floor platform. Our customer evidence starts with the real work of connecting people, machines and production information.
Customer perspective
Read Klinger’s own account of its machine-monitoring and digital manufacturing journey. This is platform evidence—not a claim of SAM AI results.
Read the customer’s storyMachine-monitoring technology reference: Sensor System · granted innovation patent 2021103530 ↗. Not a patent over the SAM AI platform.
Straight answers
No. Smart Shop Floor combines manufacturing software with process improvement and implementation support to help transform how your business works. We help optimise sales-to-production handovers, reduce repeated data entry and give your sales team more capacity to handle enquiries and prepare quotes. Connected job information, customer-portal access and clearer updates improve the customer journey and support. SAM AI prepares the work while your team retains oversight, alongside your existing accounting or ERP system.
SAM AI is Smart Shop Floor’s manufacturing AI layer for high-mix, low-volume businesses. Its four specialists are SAM Estimator, SAM Scheduler, SAM Sales Admin and SAM Knowledge Worker. They prepare estimates, schedules and follow-on actions and help staff use business information. People retain oversight and approval.
SAM prepares follow-on work across the manufacturing workflow, rather than stopping at an answer. That includes draft estimates and RFQs, bringing returned quotes into costing and preparing schedules. Your team retains oversight and approval of commitments.
SAM prepares work for the relevant person to review. Your estimator checks drawing-based quotes, your planner oversees schedules, and operators record actual work and progress. Estimator corrections and shop-floor feedback help inform future estimates and planning. SAM supports these decisions; it does not have unrestricted authority to change manufacturing processes or make customer commitments.
Yes. SAM explains its recommendations and shows the supporting evidence. The relevant estimator, planner, operator or authorised manager reviews the proposal, with approval and rejection reasons recorded. Approved changes flow into production with traceability, so your team can distinguish what SAM suggested, what was approved and what actually happened. Outcomes are measured to inform future recommendations.
Yes. SAM uses operational data to identify opportunities to improve estimates, routings, schedules and processes. For example, when actual job times consistently exceed a routing allowance, SAM can propose a revised time for the appropriate person to review. Your team considers material differences, setup requirements and machine condition before approving a change. Value stream mapping, routings and production-cost feedback support this improvement cycle.
SAM automatically emails the estimator when a draft quote is ready, with a pricing summary, supporting documents, review flags and a review link. Your team reviews the draft and approves the customer reply before sending. Customer approval of the quote comes before the scheduling handoff.
SAM Estimator uses your shop-specific historical quotes. Estimator corrections and live shop-floor feedback help improve future estimates, so the workflow reflects the materials, processes and labour assumptions of your shop.
No. Smart Shop Floor remains the manufacturing platform. SAM is an autonomous layer across estimating, scheduling and paperless operations, connected to the platform’s data and integration foundation.
Australian data and backups are hosted in Australian data centres. Private-cloud access via VPN is available, and the platform supports multi-tenant, multi-geography capability. Discuss your access, hosting and AI-processing requirements with our team when choosing your setup.
No. Spring AI is an embedded integration framework used to connect AI capabilities. It is not an AI model, a security certification or a claim of on-premises LLM inference. Model and integration requirements should be considered as part of your deployment discussion.
Let’s talk about your shop
No generic AI pitch. A conversation about how your work actually flows.
