Data capture
What is actually instrumented, how much is still counted by hand, and how far back the record goes.
Manufacturing and industrial
Engineers are doing the qualifying, one site visit at a time
You sell automation, MES or ERP, the integration work around them, or the machines themselves. The first real conversation is a day on somebody’s floor, and a good share of those days end with a plant that was never going to sign this year. RampFunnels builds the pass that happens before the drive.
Not open yet. Ours scores your funnel rather than a plant, and it is the quickest way to see one of these from the buyer’s side.
Readiness index
Question 5 of 9
Sample questionWhen a line stops, does anyone record why?
Rarely, and never the same way twiceSomeone writes it on the boardEvery stop gets a cause code
Where they come from now
Four sources, and all four hand you the same thing
A stand at an exhibition, a technical paper behind a form, a distributor passing on a name, and a field team working a patch.
Every one of them gives you a company, a job title and an email address. None of them tells you whether that plant counts output on a clipboard or runs live overall equipment effectiveness on a screen above the line. Those two prospects are years apart in what they can buy, and your pipeline treats them identically.
So the sorting gets pushed down the line, onto the people who cost the most per hour.
What qualifying costs
The scoping visit is the qualification, and it is not free
An application engineer for a day, the travel, and the write-up afterwards. Do it for every enquiry and the calendar fills with plants that were curious. Do it for none and you quote blind.
67% of B2B buyers now prefer a rep-free experience, up from 61% (Gartner, March 2026, n=646). An operations director who wants to know where their plant stands is not waiting for your diary to open to find out. They will work it out from three vendor sites and a conversation with a peer, and by then you are being ranked rather than consulted.
The visit is the right qualifying step. It is in the wrong place in the sequence.
What we would build
Five rungs, and the prospect finds out which one they are standing on
A maturity assessment, because the sale here is a sequence of projects rather than one purchase order, and a rung tells a buyer what comes next.
Working name: the Smart Factory Readiness Index. The reason it works is that your prospect already believes in the idea. Readiness models are mature in this sector. The tools running them, as of the September 2026 census behind this site, belong to trade bodies, university extension services and government manufacturing programmes rather than to suppliers.
- Rung 01
Manual
Output is counted by people, written down, and typed in again later. Nobody can answer a question about last Tuesday.
- Rung 02
Recorded
The data exists, in spreadsheets, on separate machines. Reporting is a person’s job every Monday morning.
- Rung 03
Connected
Lines report into one place. Downtime has a cause code. The number everyone argues about is at least the same number.
- Rung 04
Measured
Overall equipment effectiveness is live and trusted, and a shift can see it. Changeovers and quality losses are separable.
- Rung 05
Predictive
Maintenance and scheduling run off the data rather than off the calendar. Very few plants are standing here, and the ones that are already know it.
Five rungs is where we would start and it is a judgement, not a standard. Fewer and half your market lands on the same one. More and nobody can tell rung 4 from rung 5, including your own engineers.
The six things it asks about
Every theme is something a plant manager can answer standing up
Six themes, and the rung is where they average out. The breakdown is the part that gets read.
Connectivity
Whether the machines, the MES and the ERP talk to each other, and how many of the joins are a person retyping.
Process automation
Where the line stops for a human decision, and which of those decisions is a rule somebody could write down.
OEE visibility
Whether availability, performance and quality are separable, or whether there is one number nobody trusts.
Workforce capability
Who reads the data today, who would have to, and what happens when the one person who understands it retires.
Cyber-physical security
Whether the operational network is separated from the office one, and who can reach a controller from a laptop.
Cyber-physical security is on that list for a commercial reason as much as a technical one. It is the theme most likely to get the report forwarded upstairs, because it is the one an MD reads as risk rather than as capital expenditure.
What they get back
The report is the business case they have not had time to write
A rung, the six themes scored separately, and a sequenced order to spend in. The order is the valuable part: a plant that cannot see its downtime should not be buying predictive maintenance, and telling them so before you quote is how you become the supplier they believe.
Payback is estimated from figures the respondent enters themselves, their line rate, their downtime hours, their shift pattern. We do not supply the numbers and the report says whose they are.
The operations director who takes it is rarely the person who signs the order. So it is built as a document that survives being emailed to a finance director who has never heard of you.
The engagement
The model
The five rungs, and the six things that move a plant between them, agreed with whoever decides which enquiries get an engineer. It is signed before a question exists.
The only stage with a hard stop.
The questions
Nine or so, all answerable from memory by an operations director standing on the floor. Anything that needs a spreadsheet open gets cut, because it gets abandoned.
The report
A rung, a per-theme breakdown, and the order to fix things in. Written to be forwarded to a finance director who has never met you.
The routing
Rungs 3 and up reach a calendar. The rest get a sequence built around the theme they scored worst on, which is a different email for a plant with no cause codes than for one with no network separation.
You own the software licence. It is the cheapest line in the project and we tell you what it costs before you commit.
Your traffic
A badge scan is a name. The follow-up decides whether it was worth having
Three of the channels you already spend on, and what changes at the end of each.
Content and webinars
The technical paper gets downloaded by students, competitors and one real buyer. A scored assessment tells you which was which.
SEO
Specification-stage search is the most valuable traffic you get and the least willing to identify itself.
Outbound
A badge scan from a stand is a name. The follow-up decides whether it was worth having.
Packages
Most industrial suppliers start at the first and move up
One instrument, the funnel around it, or the programme. Fixed scope on all three, and nothing open ended.
Prices are not published yet because they are not final. When they are, they go on the pricing page as numbers, not a form.
What is in each packageQuestions
What industrial suppliers ask before they commit
They will not answer vague ones. An engineer will tell you whether downtime has cause codes, because it is a fact about their own plant and they already know the answer. The questions that get abandoned are the ones asking how they feel about digitalisation.
Your turn
Send the engineer to the plants that are ready for one
Ours scores your funnel on the four things that decide whether traffic converts, and the report names the one costing you the most leads.
Not open yet. When it opens, the score and the report are yours whether or not we ever speak.