Recently, Dragon Sourcing helped one of our customers procure five categories of wear plates from China. To do this systematically, a demand analysis was conducted to understand the customer’s requirements (volume, quality, technology, production, specs, etc.). This was followed by researching the internet, DS database, and networks, as well as references, in order to identify potential vendors. Initially, we identified 114 vendors. Subsequently, a telephone prescreening was done to prune the list further, and 52 vendors were shortlisted.
The items that our client was trying to procure included wear plates; 274 skirts; wear plates; 370mm x 370mm x 20mm with 5 holes; wear plates; 370mm x 370mm x 20mm with 3 holes; wear plates; dua plate type C bottom side liner; Hopper oversize; to suit DSM screen boxes C/W 6 only; NI-Hard chute liner wear plates and Wear plates; conveyor head chute impact plate LP23S; and 9ON DUA plates with studs. After the telephone prescreening process had been completed, we created an RFI after consulting the client. The RFI-RFQ was tailored towards our client’s needs, giving weight to business information (30%), production capabilities (35%), and quality control management (35%). The document was posted to 29 suppliers, and we received 13 replies to our RFI/RFQ.
It took 10 weeks for the entire process of demand analysis until sending out RFI-RFQs before 13 responses were received from vendors. Each vendor was then evaluated based on a scorecard against various criteria, and our findings were shared with the client about suppliers offering the best deal at the lowest prices. The client took the final decision based on our findings to select the best supplier for their specific needs.