Guides & playbooks

Great concepts start with a clear brief. Use this simple structure every time:

• What — the process or machine to automate.
• How fast — throughput or cycle time.
• Quality — checks and what happens to rejects.
• Where — environment (washdown, hazardous area, temperature).
• Constraints — preferred vendors, standards, existing equipment.

Keep it to a few sentences. The AI fills sensible gaps and flags every assumption so you stay in control.

A fast, repeatable path from enquiry to a document you can send:

• Paste the client's brief and generate a concept.
• Review the instrumentation, architecture and BOM; adjust anything that doesn't fit.
• Confirm the flagged assumptions with the client if needed.
• Export as a branded proposal (PDF) and add your commercial terms.

What used to take days of drafting now fits inside a coffee break — with your engineer signing off the technical content.

Treat every concept as a first draft. Before you rely on it, check:

• I/O count & controller sizing — headroom for spares and future expansion.
• Network — fieldbus choice, segment loading, topology.
• Safety — required performance level, e-stop and guarding logic.
• Instrumentation fit — ranges, process conditions, certifications.
• BOM — availability, lead times, preferred suppliers.

Sign-off stays with your engineer — the AI just removes the blank-page work.

Consistency makes concepts easier to review, compare and trust. To standardise:

• Agree a house brief structure everyone follows.
• Curate a shared library of validated concepts as baselines.
• Define which decisions always need senior sign-off.
• Capture preferred vendors and standards so they're applied by default.

The result: whoever scopes a job, the output looks and reads the same.

Your best designs are worth reusing. Every time a concept is validated, save it to the library with a clear name and a few tags.

Over time this becomes both a head start for similar jobs and a way to teach the AI your house style, so new concepts arrive closer to how your team actually works.

Each concept ships with an itemised BOM and indicative price bands rather than a single hard number — because early-stage pricing is a range, not a point.

Use the bands to build a defensible quote: take the mid-point for your baseline, the upper band for risk-adjusted pricing, and confirm long-lead items against current supplier availability before you commit.