Fasteners Market Procurement Intelligence Report

The market for Engineering Products and Equipment and its sub-segments such as Fasteners are at an interesting intersection. Technology is improving productivity and creating fresh demand. Convergence of data science, automation tools, 3D printing, robotics, AI and big data has opened up multiple possibilities to better serve customers at a lower operational cost.

Volatility in the prices of key inputs is creating multiple issues that impact procurement within Fasteners category such as benchmarking and budgeting of the procurement costs.

Customers are expecting service and experience levels which are at par with what ecommerce and consumer sectors of today offer. Moreover, competition keeps intensifying and demand and supply dynamics keep shifting.

Trends like these and many others discussed in this report are necessitating a relook at the way Fasteners is procured and the procurement cost saving opportunities that exist.

Fasteners procurement best practices are moving towards a level of sophistication which is typically seen in traditional procurement categories. Category managers now have an attractive opportunity to adapt the best practices seen within this category as well as those being leveraged in other non-related categories. This report summarizes the best practices picked from across multiple categories that could work well for category managers involved with Fasteners procurement strategy.

For example, Buyers should assess the level of adoption of the latest technologies by suppliers to assess cost-saving opportunities and quality that can be provided by the latter. For instance, the adoption of technologies such as cloud computing will enable suppliers to reduce their internal computing hardware requirements for operations such as CAD and CAM. This can, in turn, enable them to reduce their operating costs, thereby suppliers can offer products at lower rates to buyers.

Buyers should engage with suppliers that have adopted a global delivery model as it reduces buyers' risk. In this model, any disaster/emergency at any operating facility of supplier will result in the work being transferred to a different facility, thereby ensuring continuity of the project and reduced risk for buyers. This model also provides buyers access to skilled labor from across the globe, thereby improving the quality of engineering products provided by the supplier.

Buyers need to evaluate the in-depth expertise of suppliers in the Fasteners industry. This can be assessed by considering factors such as the years of experience, number of resources that have multi-year experience of working in the same industry and at least 3 to 5 credentials for the supplier.

Fasteners procurement managers also need to proactively identify and mitigate potential risks that can arise in the supply chain or contracts for Fasteners procurement. Some examples include: