Repeat orders for machined parts: building a re-order routine with your buyer

The repeat order for a machined part is lost quietly. The first lot passes inspection, nobody complains, and the next lot goes to whichever shop the buyer's store rang when stock ran low. A re-order routine stops that with one short list. For each running part it holds the last quantity, the dispatch date and how fast the buyer uses it. From those you work out when their stock runs out, and call a little before.

Why a good first lot does not bring the second

The purchase officer who found you placed the first order. The second is triggered by a planner or a store-keeper who sees the bin running low, and they ring the supplier they can reach fastest. So the second order depends on who is on the planner's mind the week the bin empties. Earning the trust for that second order on a brand-new account is a separate job, covered in getting the first repeat order. This post is about the parts you already run.

The running parts list

Keep one row per part number, not one per customer. A customer with eight running parts has eight call-by dates, spread over different weeks. The figures in the sample row are illustrative.

The last column follows one rule. Divide the last quantity by the buyer's use per week to get how many weeks the lot lasts. Take away your full lead time, counting material, heat treatment and plating, and one more week for the buyer's own paperwork. Count what is left from the dispatch date. That is the day you call.

In the sample row, 2,000 pieces at 250 a week last eight weeks. Take away three weeks of lead time and one of paperwork, and you call four weeks after dispatch.

Where does "use per week" come from? Ask on the call after the first delivery: "How many of these does the line use in a week?" The planner is the person who would know. If nobody will say, divide the last order quantity by the weeks between the last two orders. It is rough, and rough is enough to set a date.

What to say on the call

Ring the person who releases schedules, and give them something to check while you are on the line.

"Good morning, this is Suresh from (your shop's name). We sent 2,000 of the 45 mm bush, drawing 1123 revision C, on the 4th. At the rate your line uses them, that lot runs out around the end of next month. Is the next quantity on your schedule yet? And has the drawing moved past revision C? We want to cut the bar against the right one."

Write their answer into the row straight away: the new date, the quantity, any revision. If they say there is no requirement yet, ask when you should ring again, and put that date in.

Once in a while, ask whether a new model is coming. A new model is where the next drawing comes from, and the planner hears about it before purchase does.

Signs the account is slipping

The list shows trouble before the buyer says a word. Watch the rows for these:

• Quantity smaller than last time, with no reason given.
• Gaps between orders stretching.
• A request for a "fresh quotation" on a part you already supply.
• Rejection or short supply on your last lot that nobody closed in writing.
• Drawing revisions you heard about from the shop floor, not from purchase.
• New names at the buyer's end who have never spoken to you.

One sign on a customer: note it and ask about it on the next call. Two signs on the same customer: the owner visits the plant. The wider version of this habit, one score per account, is explained in what customer health scoring is.

For example: a turning shop in Kolhapur

Imagine a CNC turning shop in Shiroli MIDC, Kolhapur, with about thirty running parts. They go to three customers: a tractor parts maker, a pump maker and a builder of sugar mill machinery. The figures are illustrative. The owner kept the parts in memory and rang each purchase officer whenever the lathes went quiet.

The mistake came with the sugar mill builder. Expecting the usual pre-season order, the shop machined 1,500 pins ahead. The buyer had moved to revision D, with a different groove, and nobody had told the shop. Half the pins went for rework at the shop's cost and the rest sat in stores.

So the owner built the list. Each of the thirty parts got a row with its revision and the planner's name. Pins and shafts were no longer machined before a purchase order or a written schedule. Only the bar was bought ahead, and the buyer was told it was ready. Every call now opened with the revision number.

The list also showed where calls were wasted. The tractor parts maker released its schedules on a vendor portal, so for those rows the routine became a portal check on the call-by date. Nobody phoned.

The result, still illustrative, was mixed. The pump maker and the sugar mill builder placed their second orders on time. The tractor parts maker still cut one lot by a third, though the list showed the drop a week earlier than the owner's memory would have.

When this routine is the wrong tool

Two kinds of part do not belong on the call list. One is any part a buyer releases through a portal or a fixed schedule. A phone call there reads as noise. The other is a part the buyer re-quotes every year as policy, which no call will save. Keep it on the list anyway: it tells you when the request for quotation is due, and the quotation is what wins it.

With two customers and six parts, a page in a notebook does the same job.

Build the list from last year's challans

Write one row for every part that shipped more than once. Fill in the call-by column, and put the first five dates in your phone. Running parts look different in a turning shop and a tool room, and the CNC machining and precision engineering section covers both. If the list grows past what you can ring yourself, that is the point to look at customer retention as a job of its own, or to tell us what you need.