The endless push of continuously adding more designers, which includes overseas design groups, will have serious negative consequences on market wages and job security for many designers over the coming market storms. Of all the groups within a CM operation, the design group can be the most stubborn regarding process change, even when it benefits them. Instead of adopting new methods for their design process, they would instead add more hours and people, which includes low-wage overseas component designers. One area in most design groups that could make a real positive change to help them reduce the seemly endless hours is the quoting process. Using the design program is not the best use of their time in all cases. Ask yourself these critical questions.

• What is the quote-to-order ratio within your company? Most average about 30%.
• Must all of the projects be quoted using the design program? Or, could a high percentage of potential projects be processed using another method?