Sourcing framework · WP-03 · 12 pages

Sourcing Drawn and Stamped Parts

A decision framework for qualifying a supplier, reading a quotation, structuring a second source and controlling change - written for the buyer who owns the programme after the price is agreed.

Download the 12-page PDF

What is in it

01 What actually drives landed cost - the seven lines every quotation is made of
02 Five questions that qualify a supplier - what to establish before a price is discussed
03 Auditing without flying - the document set, and what each document actually proves
04 Reading a quotation line by line - what each line means, and what to ask when it is missing
05 Tooling ownership and exit - who owns the die, where it is, and what happens if you leave
06 A second source that does not double the cost - split by part family, not by percentage
07 Freight, duty and inventory - what belongs in the landed cost, and what does not
08 Change control and requalification - the changes that always need a new first article
09 A first-programme plan - twelve months, in the order the decisions actually happen

A unit price is a stack of seven lines

A unit price is not a number, it is a stack of seven lines and each line responds to a different decision. Material and yield moves with nesting, blank size, scrap rate and the grade actually specified. Draw and form operations move with the number of stations, cycle time and press rate. Tooling amortisation moves with die cost divided by the volume actually ordered. Secondary machining and ironing move with whether a call-out can be held as drawn. Finishing moves with the specification and whether it is subcontracted. Inspection, PPAP and packaging move with the quality agreement and the pack spec. Freight, duty and inventory move with the Incoterm, the shipment size and the stock that lead time forces. Three of those lines scale with volume and one - tooling amortisation - scales against it, which is why an optimistic forecast is the most expensive assumption in a programme.

Five questions that qualify a supplier, and the one that matters most

Price is the sixth question. The five that establish whether there is a supplier to negotiate with are: do you design and build your own dies; which operations are in house and which are subcontracted; how do you control incoming material and trace it from coil to shipment; what do you measure and with what; and what happens when the drawing is wrong. That last one matters most. Every drawn part programme has at least one call-out the process cannot hold as written - the only variable is when that is discovered. A supplier who raises it at the quotation stage costs a design change; one who raises it at first article costs a schedule. A real answer names the tool room, names the boundary of in-house capability and names the subcontractors on the other side of it. "We have a partner" and "no problem, we will make it" are the two answers to be wary of.

Auditing without flying

A plant visit is the best audit and the most expensive one, and most of what a visit establishes can be established beforehand from documents - which makes the visit shorter and better targeted. A process flow diagram proves the supplier has thought about the route including outsourced steps, but not that the route is what runs on the floor. A control plan proves each feature has a named method and frequency, but not that the plan is followed on a Tuesday afternoon. A first article report for a similar part shows whether the supplier measures real values or copies a certificate. Material certificates with heat numbers show traceability exists as a practice. A die list with ownership shows how many programmes the supplier has run and who owns the tooling. Corrective action records show how the supplier responds when something goes wrong. With those in hand, a visit can be spent on the three things documents cannot show: the die maintenance area, the first article bench, and whether the scrap bin contains the shape of your part.

Reading a quotation, and reading the tooling clause

Two quotations for the same part are rarely comparable as totals. They become comparable when both are broken into the same lines, and the differences are read one line at a time - material with its blank size assumption, operations with the number of draws and whether sizing is included, tooling with its amortisation and title, secondary operations named rather than bundled, the PPAP level included, the pack quantity, and the Incoterm with the assumed shipment size. The lowest total is usually the quotation that assumes the easiest part: no sizing pass, general tolerance only, a simple pack. On tooling, the die is usually the largest single payment in the programme and the item most often left undefined. Who owns it, where it is, what condition it is in, and what happens on exit are all cheaper to agree before the first invoice than after the last one - and a die that has run a million strokes is not the same asset as one that has run ten thousand.

A second source, and the changes that invalidate a first article

Splitting a part fifty-fifty between two suppliers looks balanced and costs the most. Splitting by part family costs less and gives a better answer when one supplier stops: give one supplier the whole family of parts that share a die set, a material and a process route, so each supplier runs a stable process and a failure takes out a family rather than half of every family. The test of a second source is simple: ask what would happen tomorrow if your first supplier stopped shipping. If the answer involves a new die, a new first article and a customer concession, you do not have a second source, you have a second name on a list. On change control, four changes always invalidate the previous first article - the die is modified, the material changes including a new mill or heat, a process step moves including to a different subcontractor, or the press changes. The subcontractor move is the one that is missed, and it is the one most likely to alter the magnetic properties or the surface of a housing.

The two decisions that are usually made too late

The twelve-month plan in the last chapter runs in the order the decisions actually happen: release the drawing for DFM rather than for quotation, settle the tolerance block and the measurement plan, qualify suppliers against the five questions, agree tooling ownership and exit clauses, then die design and tryout, first article and PPAP, pilot shipment, and only then qualify the second source by family. Two decisions on that list are cheap in month one and expensive in month seven: the tolerance block, and the exit clause. Everything else in the plan can be recovered from a delay. Those two cannot be recovered at all. This document contains no market statistics, no tariff figures and no prices - those change, and the framework is built so that it does not depend on them.

Frequently asked questions

Does the report contain prices or market statistics?

No. It contains no market data, no tariff figures and no prices, on purpose. A benchmark table ages badly and hides the thing that matters, which is which cost line moves when you change a decision. The framework survives a change in duty rates, freight and exchange rates because it tells you which line to re-examine rather than what the total should be.

Is the PDF free?

Yes, ungated, like the other two documents in the set. The link goes straight to the file.

Can I use it with a supplier who is not Balford?

Yes - that is the point. It is written as a buyer-side framework: the five supplier questions, the document set, the quotation lines and the tooling clauses all apply to any supplier in any region. Nothing in it depends on choosing us.

Download

WP-03 Sourcing Drawn and Stamped Parts (PDF, 12 pages). Companion documents: WP-01 Deep Draw Design Handbook and WP-02 Drawn Housing Tolerances.

Working on a first programme now?

Send the drawing through rfq.balford.net and the DFM note comes back with the schedule, the radii we would change and what each call-out costs to hold. All three documents are listed at technical whitepapers.