Which six facts does a capability page have to state?

Process, materials, tolerance band, envelope size, certifications held and typical lead time. Each one is a filter a buyer runs before sending an RFQ. A page missing any of them sends the buyer to the next tab.

Should the specification live in a downloadable PDF?

Put it on the page in HTML first. A PDF is a reasonable extra for a buyer who wants something to file. The page still has to state the same facts in text a crawler and an assistant can read.

How many capability pages does a firm need?

One for each process you want work in. A firm running milling, turning, fabrication and welding needs four pages rather than one paragraph mentioning all four.

Does a capability page work for AI assistants as well as for Google?

It is the single best page shape for both. An assistant needs a self-contained, checkable statement of fact. A procurement buyer needs exactly the same thing from the same page.

SHF-017 / SHEET 00 OF 05 / COVER

Capability Pages That Answer a Sheffield RFQ in Search and AI

SUMMARY

A capability page answers the six questions a procurement buyer runs before sending an RFQ: process, materials, tolerances, envelope, certifications and lead time. It states them near the top of the page in plain HTML rather than inside a downloadable PDF. One page per process beats one page listing every process.

SHF-017 / CONTENTS

01 THE PAGE SHAPE #sheet-01

02 ONE PER PROCESS #sheet-02

03 MARKUP AND LIMITS #sheet-03

04 Q&A REGISTER #register

05 NEXT ACTION #action

SHF-017 / SHEET 01 OF 05 / THE PAGE SHAPE

What does a buyer check before sending an RFQ?

A procurement engineer holding a drawing has a filter to run before anybody discusses price. The filter is six questions long and it takes about forty seconds.

PROCESS

Do you actually run the operation on the drawing? Name it the way an engineer names it rather than as a category.

MATERIALS

Which alloys and grades do you handle routinely? Stainless, tool steel, aluminium, titanium and plastics are all different answers.

TOLERANCE

What band do you hold as normal work, and what do you hold at your limit? A buyer needs the honest number rather than the best one you have ever achieved.

ENVELOPE

How big a part fits your machines? Maximum swing, bed size and sheet capacity all disqualify a supplier instantly when they are too small.

CERTIFICATION

Which standards do you hold, and what scope do they cover? ISO 9001 and AS9100 are checkable third-party facts rather than claims.

LEAD TIME

What is a typical lead time and a minimum order? A buyer with a line down needs the answer before the phone call, not during it.

Every one of those facts is on your shop floor already. The work is moving them onto the page in text a person and a machine can both read.

What order should the page run in?

Position	Block	Purpose
1	H1 naming the process and the area	Matches what the buyer typed
2	Answer block of three sentences	Quotable by an assistant without editing
3	Specification table	The six qualifying facts in one place
4	Equipment list with capacities	Evidence the claim is real
5	Certifications with their scope	A third-party fact a buyer can verify
6	One contact route	The action, stated once

The order is deliberate. A buyer who has to scroll past a company history to reach a tolerance figure opens the next tab instead.

SHF-017 / SHEET 02 OF 05 / ONE PER PROCESS

How many capability pages does a Sheffield firm need?

One page for each process you actually want work in. A firm running milling, turning, sheet metal work and welding needs four pages rather than four sentences on one page.

The test is simple. Write down the phrase a buyer would type. A site with no page whose main subject is that phrase has a gap in exactly that place.

Name the pages for the search rather than for the org chart. Precision machining Sheffield is a page. Division Two is not.

Process	The page a buyer is looking for
Milling	Five-axis machining, Sheffield
Turning	CNC turning, South Yorkshire
Fabrication	Sheet metal fabrication, Sheffield
Welding	TIG welding subcontractor, Sheffield
Finishing	Powder coating, Sheffield
Heat treatment	Heat treatment, South Yorkshire

How should the set be linked together?

Each capability page links up to a parent index and across to the processes a buyer commonly needs alongside it. A machined part that then needs anodising is one enquiry rather than two.

That structure is the same hub and spoke arrangement this series uses. The index carries the overview. Each page carries one subject in full depth.

MECHANISM 6 qualifying facts a buyer checks before an RFQ is sent

※1 Scope note: a page per process is a target rather than a first task. Start with the process that carries your best margin.

SHF-017 / SHEET 03 OF 05 / MARKUP AND LIMITS

What markup belongs on a capability page?

Four types, and no more than four.

Service schema naming the service and the area served.
Organization schema carrying the real trading name and company number.
BreadcrumbList schema showing where the page sits in the set.
FAQPage schema, but only when the questions and answers are visible on the page itself.

Never add review or rating markup for reviews you do not have. The practice breaches platform policy. It is also trivially checkable by anybody who looks.

What a capability page cannot do

It cannot make an unqualified supplier qualified. Stating a tolerance you cannot hold produces a failed first article and a customer who never returns.

It cannot compress the sales cycle for a regulated part. An aerospace or nuclear supply chain runs its own approval process. No web page shortens it.

It cannot rank on the day it is published. Give a new page months rather than weeks before judging it.

※1 Certification note: state the standard with its scope. A buyer checking a certificate will notice a claim wider than the scope it actually covers.

The extraction mechanism behind all of this is set out in the note on AI supplier shortlists. The full series index sits at technical notes.

SHF-017 / SHEET 04 OF 05 / Q&A REGISTER

REF	QUESTION + ANSWER
Q.01	Which six facts does a capability page have to state? Process, materials, tolerance band, envelope size, certifications held and typical lead time. Each one is a filter a buyer runs before sending an RFQ. A page missing any of them sends the buyer to the next tab.
Q.02	Should the specification live in a downloadable PDF? Put it on the page in HTML first. A PDF is a reasonable extra for a buyer who wants something to file. The page still has to state the same facts in text a crawler and an assistant can read.
Q.03	How many capability pages does a firm need? One for each process you want work in. A firm running milling, turning, fabrication and welding needs four pages rather than one paragraph mentioning all four.
Q.04	Does a capability page work for AI assistants as well as for Google? It is the single best page shape for both. An assistant needs a self-contained, checkable statement of fact. A procurement buyer needs exactly the same thing from the same page.

SHF-017 / SHEET 05 OF 05 / NEXT ACTION

One step from here

Send the process you most want work in. The reply states which of the six facts your current page is missing.

ACTION: SEND YOUR LEAD PROCESS