Foundry Materials Market Procurement Intelligence Report

The market for Engineering Materials and its sub-segments such as Foundry Materials are at an interesting intersection. Suppliers are continuously taking efforts to improve efficiencies and productivity and deploying processes and technologies. Some of these investments are likely to increase their costs in the shorter term, but learnings from other sectors keep the suppliers optimistic about a lean cost structure in the longer run.

Suppliers are under an enhanced pressure to offer greater quality, options that suit unique requirements and overall experience of the customer stakeholders involved.

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.

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

Foundry Materials 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 Foundry Materials procurement strategy.

For example, Competitive bidding as a cost optimization tool is extremely potent but should be carefully deployed only when there is no significant differentiation among Foundry Materials suppliers.

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 should invest in benchmarking studies that help category managers to improve their knowledge on market pricing or billing rates of service providers. This helps them to not only save costs but also increase their negotiation power.

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