Hy,
I´m on the other side of the fence. We´re a small company with a wide variety of milled, drilled, cast and turned parts needed for the product. Therefore, we go shopping around. We bargain hard but once set, we have the parts and 28 days later you´ll have the money, usually even faster if you give us 3-5% on the price in the first two weeks...
I narrowed myself to having 3-4 companys bid for a part or only two if I know the others can´t compete anyhow. Why burn the manhours of bidding for a contract worth 500 bucks in more than a few shops? Even if this is not my time, I´ll have to pay it next time you´ll do something for me.
I know each of my suppliers by handshake, dropped out the ones who tried to cheat me and I´m ever happy since. My closest supplier will do rush parts on demand without a quote and he never tried to fool me afterwards. He does em on Saturday or Sunday and I´ll pick them up on Monday morning to get them to galvanizing in a rush. He knows I honor his work and the speed it´s done, he honors me paying superfast and taking responsibility for my prints. I won´t press him for parts if it is not an emercency, he won´t try to cheat me on part count or material. I had to come over to a shop to ok shortcuts in production or problems/changes with the part geometry/neccessary tools more than once. Usually now, this ends with a chat and a beer. In the beginning, this was hard, because they thought I want to tell them how to do their work.
I had differencies in the beginning concerning surfaces, scratches, dimensions, parts count and a few other minor issues since everybody in the shop was allowed to order and nobody checked the incoming parts. They were sometimes partially crappy and not to spec or the paperwork was missing, no invoice and 3 weeks later they yelled at me "where is my money?" Since we installed quality control, live is far easier, both for me and my suppliers. We don´t take parts without paperwork, we sign our prints and our changes with date and name and we try to do what we would expect from our supplier.
I got most of my suppliers down to 1-2 weeks from order to parts. It was 4-6 weeks in the beginning. It was hard to move their weary a**es in the beginning, but as soon as they discovered that the money is there shortly after the parts are out the door, they picked up the pace (I had to emphasize this more than once, but great things bear repetition). It´s cool if you walk into the office of a supplier on friday and they say " today, you´re pretty late, lets see what you need next week." They know I´m coming, so they reserve a timeslot for me.
In my old line of work, it was usual to ask for a bid from a company if you had no idea how to manufacture a part, paying targets were sloppy at least and in case someone inhouse fu***ed up a print, they tried to shift the responsibility to the manufacturer. I more than once saw rush jobs rot on a skid because the guy who ordered them was on vacation when they arrived. It was a large company but luckily, I left this behind me.
Now, we´re ten people in our department. We play hard but fair. We try to be as predicteable as possible for our suppliers and we only rush parts when it is really necessary. We have the parts, you have the money. I´ve seen other companies jobs getting put on the rack because my parts were on the list, more than once. Both my suppliers and I like the way how it´s done.
What I wanted to say with all this dallying is: There are always two, one who does and one who accepts. If you´re a sloppy supplier, I´ll kick you off my list after a few tries. If I´m a bad customer, same thing for me, feel free to kick me from yours.
Greetings,
Johann
