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The Capability Profile That Gets Your Shop Shortlisted

September 22, 2026

Most stamping shops describe themselves in the language of a brochure: experienced team, competitive pricing, customer focused. A buyer comparing four shops cannot act on any of that. What they act on is a capability profile that answers, in numbers, whether your shop can run their part.

Here is what to put in one, in the order a buyer reads it.

The eight numbers that do the work

  1. Press tonnage range. From the smallest to the largest press you would run a production job on, not the one press you own at the top end.
  2. Bed sizes for those presses. A die that does not fit is a no quote regardless of tonnage.
  3. Die types run in house. Progressive, transfer, deep draw, fourslide, single stage. Name them separately, because they are separate skills.
  4. Material range and thickness. Steel grades, stainless, aluminium, copper alloys, with the thinnest and thickest you run comfortably.
  5. Coil width and feed capability. This decides whether a progressive job is even possible for you.
  6. Volume band. Annual pieces you are set up for, and the batch size below which you would rather not quote.
  7. Tooling. Whether you build dies in house, and who owns the tooling under your standard terms.
  8. Lead times. Separate the tooling lead time from the production lead time. Buyers plan around both and they are very different numbers.

A profile carrying those eight is more useful than three pages of prose, and it takes twenty minutes to write.

Evidence beats adjectives

Buyers discount claims and accept evidence. For each of these, the evidence is short and specific:

  • Quality system. Name the standard and the certificate number, or say plainly that you run to a documented system without certification. Both are acceptable to many buyers. Vagueness is not.
  • PPAP and documentation. Say which levels you have actually submitted and to which industry. If you have never done a full PPAP, say so. See our note on PPAP and IATF for stamped automotive parts.
  • Inspection. List the equipment: CMM, vision system, height gauges, hardness tester. Say whether you have a temperature controlled room.
  • Photographs. The press floor, the die storage, the inspection area, the packing area. Buyers look at die storage more closely than shops expect, because a tidy die rack says maintenance is real.

What to leave out

  • Claims you cannot back with a document or a photograph.
  • Customer names you do not have permission to use. Describe the industry and the part type instead.
  • Capacity numbers with no time base. “High volume” means nothing. “Two million pieces a year on 200 ton progressive work” means something.
  • A materials list that includes everything. A shop that claims every metal reads as a shop that specialises in none.

The part of the profile shops skip

What you do not want. A short section naming the work you decline is the single strongest trust signal in a profile, and almost nobody writes one. It tells a buyer you know your process window, and it saves you from previews you were never going to win.

Two lines is enough: “We do not quote deep draw over 50 mm depth. We do not take single piece prototype work below 500 pieces.”

Keeping it current

Capability drifts. A press goes down for six months, a die builder leaves, a new servo press arrives. A profile written once and never touched sends you the wrong requests for years.

The practical habit is to review it whenever equipment or certification changes, and to send us the update the same week. What you registered is what we match against, so an accurate profile is not paperwork, it is the filter that decides which RFQ previews land in your inbox.

The matching criteria themselves are set out in how stamping shops qualify for the RFQ leads we match, and the buyer side of the same conversation is in how to choose a metal stamping supplier.

Ready to put yours in front of buyers? Register your shop and we reply within 24 business hours.

Frequently asked questions

Should I list every press we own?

List the presses you would actually run a new job on, with tonnage, bed size and feed capability. A long list of idle or worn equipment reads as padding and buyers discount the whole profile.

Is it worth claiming a capability we subcontract?

Only if you say it is subcontracted and name the step. Buyers accept plating, heat treat and welding through partners. What they do not accept is finding out at PPAP stage that the work leaves your building.

How often should the profile be updated?

Whenever a press, a die type or a certification changes, and at minimum once a year. An out of date profile sends you previews you cannot win and hides the work you could.

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