Repeat orders from OEMs for sheet metal parts: staying on the vendor list and in the next RFQ

Your vendor code is three years old. The schedules for the four brackets and two covers you make still arrive, and you deliver them. Then you hear from a friend at another shop that the new model's sheet metal parts went out for quotation, and you were not asked. Being on the approved list keeps the running parts. It does not bring the next drawing. That goes to the vendor the development engineer thinks of first and the buyer finds easy to deal with. Stay known and useful to both between schedules.

Approved is not the same as asked

When an OEM develops a new part, someone has to decide which approved vendors get the RFQ. That shortlist is short. Purchase looks at the vendor rating, which records rejections and late deliveries. The development engineer adds what the rating cannot show. Who handled the last drawing change without fuss? Who has the press brake length or laser bed for this part? And who have they actually heard from lately?

A shop that delivers quietly and never speaks is safe on the running parts. It is invisible at the shortlist. Winning the first RFQ from an OEM is a different problem, covered in how industrial buyers decide which unit gets the RFQ. This note is about the ones after it.

The three people who decide whether you see the drawing

The buyer for your commodity. This person owns sheet metal parts, or a list of vendors under it, and gets moved. Buyers get moved across categories, and the new one inherits your rating with none of your history.

The development engineer. This person is designing or localising the new part and wants a vendor who reads drawings carefully and raises questions before cutting, not after the first sample fails.

The supplier quality engineer. This person visited for your approval and handles your rejections. Their view of you is the root cause note you sent the last time something went wrong, or the note you did not send.

Each wants a different kind of contact. None of them wants a call asking "any new enquiry, sir?"

Reasons to get in touch that the OEM will thank you for

• A drawing query, raised before you cut, that shows you read the revision and checked the bend relief.
• A one-page root cause and the change you made, sent to the quality engineer when a rejection is closed.
• A cost-down idea from the part itself, such as a bend that replaces a weld, a different nest or a grade change for the engineer to approve.
• A note on new capacity and what it means for them: "We can now bend up to this length, so the long side panel need not be welded from two pieces."
• An early warning on steel, sent to the buyer before a short grade of coil hits the schedule.
• A one-page list of every part you make for a new buyer, with its current revision, your schedule history and your contact.

Each of these keeps you known without asking for anything. Holding them together for a large OEM is account management and key account growth.

For example: a Hosur shop and the new motor cover

Imagine a sheet metal shop in Hosur making terminal box covers and mounting brackets for a motor and pump maker nearby. It had been an approved vendor for years. Its buyer was moved to castings, and the new buyer inherited a rating that showed one late delivery from a coil shortage the previous winter. Nobody at the shop had met the development engineer. When the next motor frame went into development, the covers went to two other vendors.

The owner asked the new buyer for a short meeting and took the one-page part list along. The ask was to be considered as second source for one cover, with development samples at the shop's cost. The shop's quality engineer also sent a written root cause for the old late delivery, with the change in how coil is ordered. The OEM's quality engineer was invited to see the press brake trial. The shop was asked to quote one cover on the next variant. The shop quoted it and sent a cost-down note moving a welded corner to a bend. In this invented case the buyer awarded that cover as a second source at a small share, and the other two vendors kept the rest; the old late delivery stayed in the rating for another quarter.

The account register: one page per OEM

Keep this for every OEM that gives you schedules. A notebook works. So does a shared sheet.

The column that matters is "next reason to contact". If it is empty for everyone, nobody at that OEM will think of you when the next drawing arrives. The same register, kept for every account with the quiet ones marked, is what customer retention comes down to.

When staying warm will not save the account

If your rating is poor on delivery or rejections, fix the shop first. Contact on top of a bad record reads as noise, and the quality engineer will say so in the sourcing meeting.

If the OEM is moving to fewer, larger vendors who also coat and assemble, the decision is about scope, not relationships. Decide whether you will add those steps, partner for them, or accept being a second source.

And if one OEM is most of your turnover, the bigger risk is the dependence itself. Spend part of this effort winning a second OEM, starting with the kinds of buyer listed under sheet metal and fabrication.

Write the register for your largest OEM

Do it today, from memory. Where you cannot name the person, that is a gap. Where the last useful contact was a year ago, that is another. Then pick one reason from the list above and use it before the next schedule arrives. Setting this up across every OEM you supply is account management work; to start that conversation, tell us what you need.