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What are the Job Titles of People Who Award Manufacturing Contracts?

reidhardy

Plastic
Joined
Apr 3, 2020
I am trying to build more leads for the shop I work at, and I'm trying to figure out what the job titles are for people who award machine contracts. I know that a lot of our customers are "Procurement", but I feel like there has to be a more specific title for people who manage outside machine work/manufacturing. I know that engineers will also occasionally contract out manufacturing. Have any of you noticed a trend in who is actually awarding machine contracts at a business?
-Alternate wording for my question-
If you were cold calling for machine work and could get a hold of anyone at a business, who would you ask for?
 
Director of manufacturing
Plant manger
Head of quality control
Production manger
Process engineer
Head of maintenance
Purchasing agent
(in that order , but depending on the kind of work you do it may differ)
 
I cannot believe the nice complete answer RJT, I think I would have just told them to Goggle and not start a thread about something like this.
 
I am trying to build more leads for the shop I work at, and I'm trying to figure out what the job titles are for people who award machine contracts. I know that a lot of our customers are "Procurement", but I feel like there has to be a more specific title for people who manage outside machine work/manufacturing. I know that engineers will also occasionally contract out manufacturing. Have any of you noticed a trend in who is actually awarding machine contracts at a business?
-Alternate wording for my question-
If you were cold calling for machine work and could get a hold of anyone at a business, who would you ask for?

:scratchchin: Did you think about asking for purchasing by chance???? :rolleyes5:
 
Great question, this can sure vary by company. If the customer is a larger "commodity" buyer (that doesn't mean you're a commodity manufacturer necessarily), there is usually three levels of activity:

1. Evaluate/approve the potential supplier: Purchasing/procurement/supply chain manager This can also go into engineering and even manufacturing.
2. Negotiate the price/establish contact: Could be the same people as above but can also be a purchasing agent (who could also do the above step).
3. Make the routine purchases (usually a buyer).

Again, this can sure vary by company but ideally the first step is to get in touch with the person who could go "Oh yeah, we could use a better supplier for those products". The may not make the decision but they might trigger the process.

Now, if you're a job shop (doesn't mean you aren't making commodity items), this tends to switch over more towards engineering but even that can vary.

Here's the #1 key issue: find the person who doesn't necessarily make the final decision, but can kick off the process (i.e. influence the right people) for starting to evaluation your company and it's services. In some companies, this can be the "buyer", who can't make the decision but can tell their boss that they may have found a company that can perform better than their current supplier.

Good luck!
The Dude
 
One way to look at it: engineer is usually trying to expend resources, a purchasing agent is trying to conserve them.

I think first you have to get past purchasing who are managing a race to the bottom, but ultimately have to please the engineer with your (quality, speed, etc).

In some companies engineers can "single source" and bypass purchasing's work on multi-quoting the same part.

There are shops I absolutely won't deal with because of issues with their product.

Maintenance departments are a great place to start. They always need special tools, they always need "stuff" to keep their plant running and a lot more freedom with their budget. There's a litany of parts which have gone obsolete from the OEM and have to be replaced by others but usually there's an "adapter" in there somewhere. Usually there isn't time for anyone to second-guess small to medium purchases.
 
Find an engineer that can't get what they need.

Yep (engineer here). Get an engineer at a company that's not missing dollars to save pennies and solve their problem.

If you want R&D or first run sort of volumes then the only way to get the purchasing guy's attention is to throw something well out of the norm, and then be able to back it up. The only supplier I can think of off hand who might be able to get away with this is a swiss shop I used a few jobs ago. They were so competitive on precision round stuff in 10-500k/year volumes that they were sending parts to China for a decent (10-20%?) portion of their business, and they hadn't made a reject part in years (yes, really, and we were checking). Not one late shipment, dinged part, missed finish or tolerance, nothing. Few can pull that off, I know I can't.

Now, when I have a problem on 1 to 100 parts, I'll ask the shop for a quote, then tell the purchasing guy "Send this order to this place for this amount". Some places are cheaper than others. The hard part is finding that one odd problem, then not missing any of the reasons that we're still using the problem shop. One place for example had a hard time making things the right thickness (4 tenths on thickness). Not all that hard, half the shop could do it in their sleep. Unfortunately we often got the other half of the shop. Thing is, they'd fix it fast, they had a TON of spare capacity so we could hand them a huge pile of stuff out of nowhere and they wouldn't quote us a 10 week lead, and reasonable sized orders came back under 3 weeks. My manager also didn't understand that they weren't really 10% cheaper compared to local options because of the time spent getting them to fix things, so I had a really hard time getting anyone else in the door, and I'm sure the shops that I spoke with felt it was difficult as well.

If you don't want to touch anything under 100k parts/year (I suspect that is not the case here) or at least a very consistent job then you probably need the buyer (or purchasing agent). As an engineer by the time I'm having a problem on 100k parts/year there is almost always an obvious and effective solution, but it costs $0.01 more per part and if that cost gets approved by someone above me it will do so at the current supplier, or at another supplier willing to eat in to their margin that much more (I don't ever want to be a high volume automotive supplier).
 
Purchasing Agent (PA)or Buyer, Procurement Specialist are some of the names in larger places. Everybody throws sales pitches at them and they often have "their list" to buy from.

After tossing out your sales pitch and getting knocked down you have have a choice of moving on to another place or maybe trying to go over or under their heads. Over is tough as there tends to be a gatekeeper and they usually do not want to be bothered...its why they have a gatekeeper and PA's.

I found my in was by finding ways to get the PA or anyone to put me on the floor of the place to go "Look" at a bid that was out or just be creative. Point it get on the floor usually means they need someone to escort you. Person escorting you is often not doing their normally asigneded job and quite happy about that. Now you can ask and hint at what you do, what you can do that Might be valuable to them, to him. Also as he takes you around you might get introduced...have cards, pens and a quick pitch without being needy or pitchy. I rarely got the job I went to look at...but in the right place at the right time I was able to pick up a lead, a quick job or a modification and made sure I took part with me so it had to be brought back..Another chance to meet people and pick up another job. I used to offer...this is the cost, I'll start getting it made and you work on how to get bill paid. ANd if you can't pay, we'll figure something out or don't pay, we'll tack it onto something else later.
Last time I did that I was getting a bunch of small crappy jobs with one or two nice ones tossed in...but each time I went I had to go through the Big Boppers secretary. I let her know what we did in very basic terms...no pitch, made as much small talk as we could...never asked to see the big man. After several visits secretary went out of her way to introduce me to her boss, telling him I was the guy taking care of making his people happy. Turns out he knew about the guy coming around doing small jobs nobody wanted to be bothered with at a fair price, getting parts done before orders where placed. He thanked me, asked for my card and wanted to know why I had not asked to meet with him. I said I knew he was busy and didn't need another vendor knocking on his door. He asked if I wanted more work and if I met with his PA, with that he brought me into meet with his PA...and if you want to get off on the right foot...have Mr Big Honcho introduce you to his PA with a "do me a favor, Give this guy a try when you can, the guys say hes great to work with".
Point is...find any angle to get yourself in,network yourself, prove yourself and stick with it. You have to be different to stand out from others.
 
My title is "Sr Mechanical Engineer". I model the parts & assys in CAD with input from electrical & optical engrs & scientists, thermal & vibration analysts. I or a jr engr will make the drawings that get quoted.

I provide the RFQ's to purchasing to gather quotes. They gather the quotes, sometimes I suggest where they go for bid. When bids/quotes come back I decide who the award goes to.

I have a couple favorites that I use for various situations. Shops all have different strengths/weakness. Many times it comes down to cost $, delivery time, or my need for quality on an intricate part. Pick any two.

More often it's cost & time that is the driver. Recently started working w/ a vendor I found on PM.

-Mark
 








 
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