Skilled technical roles in manufacturing are becoming increasingly difficult to fill, and the pressure is rising. According to the DIHK Economic Survey from February 2025, 46% of German companies now list a shortage of qualified personnel as a top business risk. In industrial sectors, the impact is especially severe.
The Cedefop Labour and Skills Shortage Index highlights this even more clearly. Germany ranks among the most affected countries in Europe, with persistent shortages in engineering, machine operation and manufacturing-related occupations. For teams involved in quoting and cost estimation, the consequences are immediate. Deadlines slip. Inputs go unchecked. And gaps in pricing logic start to surface at the worst possible time - during negotiations.
In this blog, we explore how manufacturers are responding to these pressures. We explain why cost transparency is emerging as a key success factor and how software like Tset can help unlock faster, more accurate and more defensible quotes without overburdening your teams.
Europe’s Manufacturing Talent Gap Is Growing
By 2030, nearly 5 million skilled workers will retire in Germany alone (IAB, 2023). Across industrial sectors, the search for replacements is already proving difficult. Cost engineers, procurement professionals and technical sales experts are in short supply, yet essential for creating accurate quotes.
For procurement and engineering teams already stretched thin, this presents a critical challenge. Quoting new projects or responding to RFQs often requires cross-functional collaboration, expert input and detailed knowledge of manufacturing processes and supply chain structures. With fewer people on hand, organizations face a growing risk: relying on outdated data, assumptions or overly generic templates just to keep up.
This not only slows teams down, but also undermines their ability to win business profitably or defend margins when costs rise.
The Quoting Problem Is Bigger Than The Lack of People
Staff shortages are only one piece of the puzzle. At many suppliers, quotation processes remain manual and fragmented:
-
Engineering and Procurement rely on separate tools and templates
-
Cost knowledge is scattered across spreadsheets, emails and personal experience
-
If key people are out-of-office, quoting slows down
-
Quotes are often missing the latest price levels, updated cost structures or supply chain risks
At the same time, OEM expectations are rising. Purchasing departments demand speed and transparency. Whether it’s quote reviews or supplier negotiations, the key question is always: How did you arrive at this price? Without a structured basis for cost calculation, many suppliers cannot answer confidently and therefore risk losing deals.
That’s why companies are rethinking their quoting strategies and investing in digital quoting workflows. To cope with rising RFQ volumes and shrinking teams, many suppliers are turning to product costing tools. These are digital solutions that calculate the expected cost of a product based on engineering inputs, sourcing conditions and supply chain data. Product costing software provides a structured foundation for quoting and help teams respond faster with accurate, defensible pricing.
What Best-in-Class Quoting Looks Like
1. Should Costing Under Pressure
Leading suppliers now use should-costing methods to create data-driven quotes, even when under pressure. This includes:
-
Generating greenfield cost calculations that show the ideal price based on technical and economic assumptions
-
Adjusting these models to reflect real-world supplier constraints
This structured approach gives procurement and sales teams a much stronger foundation for:
-
Internal cost reviews
-
External pricing discussions and supplier negotiations
2. From Cost Awareness to Quote Optimization
This structured quoting process also enables quote optimization based on a comparison of greenfield and brownfield calculations. By analyzing the delta between the ideal cost (greenfield) and the actual current-state cost (brownfield), teams can clearly identify where cost gaps exist and which levers can be pulled to close them.
Typical optimization areas include:
-
Material selection and substitution
-
Design adaptations for manufacturability or cost
-
Alternative sourcing or supplier options
-
Manufacturing process changes (e.g. casting vs. machining)
-
Part consolidation or complexity reduction
… and others depending on volume, product architecture or supply chain constraints.
This approach moves teams from gut feeling to fact-based pricing logic, grounded in cost simulation and real manufacturing data.3. Faster, More Consistent Quoting With the Right Software
And with the right cost engineering software in place, the entire quoting process becomes:
-
Significantly faster
-
More consistent
-
Easier to scale across departments
-
Less dependent on individual knowledge
-
Audit-ready and traceable
This is what separates reactive quoting from a true, data-driven quoting strategy.
Why Tset?
Tset helps manufacturing companies quote smarter, even when capacity is tight. With Tset’s product costing tool, you can:
-
Generate accurate should-cost estimates in minutes, not hours
-
Run simulations of design and sourcing options in real time
-
Identify cost levers based on best-practice greenfield and brownfield calculations
-
Build defensible quotes with traceable logic
-
Reduce reliance on individual expertise with a single source of truth
Whether you are a supplier under pressure or a cost engineer looking for more structured tools, Tset provides the foundation to quote faster and win more, without increasing headcount or complexity.