The case study shows how Dragon Sourcing helped clients procure packing materials and MRO parts from emerging economies. Our client asked us to look for potential suppliers for sourcing:
- Paper bags
- Palletizing firms
- Flanks of sugar in cardboard boxes
- Standard motors
- Centrifugal pumps
- Spare parts for pumps
- Beet knives
- valves
Once we received the request, we analyzed the demand to better understand our clients’ needs in terms of specifications, production technology, the kinds of quality checks suppliers conducted on their goods, certificates, and other factors. After gathering all data from the client, we looked at the supply market to find potential manufacturers of these goods.
After researching the suppliers, we identified 14 suppliers in China (7 in Guangdong, 2 in Shandong, 4 in Shanghai, 1 in Jiangxi), and 10 suppliers in India (3 in Maharashtra, 1 in Delhi/Haryana/Karnataka/Andhra Pradesh/Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh). We did a prescreening telephone interview to determine whether the suppliers were interested in selling their goods to our client to narrow the list. We also verified that they addressed every request made by our client.
Following the pre-screening, we created a list of 65 providers who met all the client-specified requirements. We submitted an RFI-RFQ (prepared after discussing it with our customer) to the potential vendors once we had narrowed the field of candidates. Our RFI-RFQ received responses from only 24 providers, 14 of them were from China and 10 from India. We evaluated the requests for information (RFI) from possible vendors based on several criteria, including business information (20%), production (25%), quality management (25%), social responsibility (10%), and certificates, papers, and images (15%). Next, we requested product samples from the providers.
We suggested the names of sixteen suppliers after examining their RFI responses and samples. Six were from India, while ten were from China. After the project was finished, we gave our clients access to all our charts and research materials so they could select the best supplier(s) from whom they would like to get materials.