THE CHALLENGE
Management decision
Supplier databases produced a large list, but management could not distinguish trading companies from production-capable suppliers.
CONSTRAINTS
What made the decision difficult
- Critical tolerances and material specs
- Audit travel/time constraints
- Quality drift risk after samples
- Need for second-source resilience
TIMELINE
12–16 weeks
Staged so management can stop, modify or increase commitment as evidence improves.
EXPECTED JOURNEY
Evidence → decision → execution
Diagnose uncertainty, validate it in India, make an explicit investment gate, then execute the approved next stage.
Solution design
- BOM/category segmentation
- Build supplier universe
- Desktop evidence gates
- RFQ and should-cost comparison
- Sample/technical qualification
- Factory audit and pilot order
- Dual-source and supplier governance design
KPIs
Qualified suppliers per critical category
RFQ response quality
Sample first-pass yield
Landed saving vs baseline
OTIF pilot performance
Supplier risk score
End execution plan
- Weeks 1–3: category intelligence
- Weeks 4–6: RFQ/evidence qualification
- Weeks 7–10: samples and technical reviews
- Weeks 11–13: factory validation
- Weeks 14–16: negotiation/pilot
- 90-day ramp: supplier scorecard, CAPA and dual-source plan
Government / regulatory / legal
- Supplier GST/MCA/Udyam and statutory evidence checked where relevant
- Export/import documentation and origin requirements
- Quality/system certifications independently verified
- Supply, tooling, IP, warranty and quality agreements reviewed
Control: applicability must be confirmed for the actual product, activity, entity, state and transaction by the appropriate qualified specialist/authority.
END RESULT
Decision state
A small validated supplier base, landed-cost case and controlled pilot—not a supplier directory
IMPACT
Why it matters
Moves sourcing from discovery to production evidence.