Fuses Market Procurement Intelligence Report

The market for Engineering Components and its sub-segments such as Fuses are at an interesting intersection. Suppliers are under an enhanced pressure to offer greater quality, options that suit unique requirements and overall experience of the customer stakeholders involved.

Suppliers of Fuses are moving up the value chain - both organically as well as through M&As. Their portfolios are increasingly being diversified with the objective of offering integrated solutions that go beyond just Fuses. Even buyers are engaging vendors who can act as a one-stop solution provider across their geographic footprint. Such strategic engagements can help buyers with savings associated with economies of scale and management of a much smaller supplier base.

Regulatory guidance on data protection and increasing concern over cybersecurity have increased the costs for suppliers as they incur additional spend on compliance and security. These additional costs have a potential to drive marginal increase in prices across the key geographies.

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

As market conditions become more dynamic and procurement practices get more sophisticated, category managers need to be cognizant of the best practices that work for their Fuses category procurement. The report offers a succinct analysis of Fuses procurement best practices.

For example, Buyers should engage with suppliers that repurchase used products at fair market value. This assists buyers to dispose of used products in a convenient manner. Also, during such repurchases, suppliers provide credits to buyers for future purchases. This reduces overall procurement costs for buyers.

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 need to evaluate the in-depth expertise of suppliers in the Fuses 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.

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