My three commonly used steel suppliers all quote prices differently. Per hundred weight. Per foot. Per inch. And then you ask for 20' sticks and they quote 24' sticks. Almost impossible to accurately compare without a spreadsheet.
Thanks for the reply, ditto here. My suppliers also price in different quantities. Wire as an example, some price by the foot, some by hundred foot, some by the thousand and still others quote the total of my order. Though it's not quadratic equations, it still eats time.
thanks again, knn
Scruffy887
Your vendors need to all be wanting to do this so that the information needed is all in the same format. Do you see them all wanting to make sure only the lowest price vendor gets the sale? Race to the bottom for them.
True, while they all realize that they are in competition with each other, they aren't going to make it easy.
adammil1
I thought this is pretty standard with a correctly setup MRP system, however I think the keyword is "correctly" as the one at my company clearly wasn't setup to do it correctly.
My initial thought is that we are nowhere near large enough to warrant such a system. I will however research the matter to determine if I am correct.
Scruffy887
For smaller companies the purchasing function is a fookin sinkhole. Drags you down and worse, drags your company down if some purchaser spends 2 hours sourcing something and saves you fiddy cents total. The lowest price is most often the part/stock that was easiest to get. An employee thought purchasing was easy. So I gave him a desk and phone and said "buy this job out". FAIL and he did not want to do it again. Call, wait for return call, call back, on and on and on. Purchasing is a huge time sink, keeps you away from making machines scream.
Before taking this job I couldn't imagine it even being a necessary position, having done it all myself when I was self employed. It only took two days for me to be buried. Everyday I am forced to drag tasks from yesterday's TDL (to do list) onto today's TDL. Hence my desire to increase efficiency in every area of my responsibilities.
And yeah, from secretaries urrr (Administrative Assistants) who's only concern is to clear the call off their board (to their favorite) "voicemail", which I personally don't think are EVER checked, to sales reps uuuhhhmmm (Customer Experience Advocates) who don't seem to be interested in selling anything, it all culminates in one huge time suck.
So while I research streamlining everything I've decided to use an ad-hoc approach as follows: a) time critical needs = whoever has it closest. b) needed tomorrow = phone call pricing going to lowest price who has it. c) farther out = RFQ via e-mail preceded by a phone call to alert them to the e-mail.
Meanwhile, try to keep it all running smoothly.
Thanks folks, you've given me a direction. knn
