2026-06-25 · RFQ Operations

Mid-Year Tooling RFQ Cleanup For Summer Production

A practical mid-year checklist for cleaning open RFQs, stale supplier responses, files, quote assumptions, and follow-up ownership before summer work stacks up.

Late June is a good point to clean the tooling RFQ backlog before summer production schedules tighten. Open requests can look active even when the real blocker is an old drawing, a supplier response that never came back, or a quote that still needs internal review.

The first step is to separate live work from stale work. Teams should identify which RFQs still have a real customer or production need, which ones are waiting on updated files, and which ones can be closed or archived.

The second step is to review supplier response status. If a supplier has not responded, the record should show whether the team will follow up, reroute, request an alternate, or close the lane. Leaving the status unclear makes every later review slower.

Files and quote assumptions also deserve a pass. A current drawing, current model, current quantity, and current due date should be obvious before the next person touches the request.

A mid-year cleanup can stay small: make the active queue easier to trust so buyers, distributors, suppliers, and application teams can focus on the requests that still need a decision.