Supplying one plant in Pantnagar and finding the next buyer

When the anchor plant slows its line for a model change, your presses stand, because your whole order book is its schedule. Many units in SIDCUL Pantnagar sit beside one customer. The next buyer may be within a few kilometres. It could be another vehicle plant, a Tier 1, or a non-auto unit that needs parts your machines can make. Map who is there and what each buys. Find the engineer who sources new parts. Then send each one a one-page capability note written for their parts, not your brochure.

Read the cluster by what it buys

Pantnagar is not one market. Around the vehicle plants sit Tier 1s making seats, harnesses, castings and sheet metal assemblies, and next to them are units that have nothing to do with vehicles. Rudrapur and Kashipur are next door, and elsewhere in Uttarakhand Haridwar's SIDCUL estate has its own plants and suppliers. A press shop that makes brackets for a motorcycle frame can make them for an electrical panel.

Drive the estate roads on a working day and read the gate boards. Note the name, what it makes, and whose logo is on the trucks waiting at the gate, because that tells you who it supplies.

Then ask the people who already see inside these units. The plating and heat-treatment job shops handle parts from a dozen companies, and their owners know who is short of a press shop or a machining vendor. The steel service centre that cuts coil for the estate knows who buys which thickness and grade. Neither will hand you a list. Both will tell you where to look. The wider case for a second buyer is in finding a second buyer when one plant buys most of your output.

The map: five columns, filled from the estate

These rows are illustrative. Yours come from the gate boards and the job shop owners.

The last column matters most. A part already in production is hard to move to a new supplier. The door opens when a new model or variant is being developed, or when the current supplier fails on quality or delivery. So the question to ask an engineer is not "do you need a supplier?" but "what are you developing next?"

One page a development engineer will read

A purchase head at a Tier 1 has a drawer of brochures. What gets read is one page that shows, in the buyer's terms, that you can make their part. Write it in this order:

1. One line on what you make. "Sheet metal pressings up to 4 mm and welded sub-assemblies for two-wheeler and commercial-vehicle programmes."
2. Machines and ranges. Press tonnages and bed sizes, CNC machines, welding cells, with real numbers from your shop floor.
3. What is in-house and what goes out. Painting, plating and heat treatment are the usual questions.
4. Your quality system. The certification you hold, such as IATF 16949, or the system you run and how far along you are. Say whether you have submitted PPAP documents to your current customer, and at what level.
5. Two photographs of parts you make, with no customer name unless your customer has agreed.
6. Capacity you can offer. Shifts and press hours free, stated honestly.
7. Distance. "Inside SIDCUL Pantnagar, ten minutes from your gate" counts for a buyer who wants small lots and a supplier who can come when the line has a problem.
8. A named engineer and a mobile number, someone who can talk about tolerances, not only rates.

Change the order for each buyer. For the panel builder, lead with small lots and quick setups. For the seating Tier 1, lead with the quality system and PPAP.

Get the note to the engineer, then get the engineer to your shop

Purchase is the gate, but the development or supplier quality engineer decides whether you can make the part. Ask the job shop owner to name that engineer. Send the note with a short covering message, and call two days later. Every contact aims at one thing: a visit to your shop. An engineer who has seen your presses running and your inspection room in order will put your name forward. One who has only read your note will not.

When two or three units respond, keep one page of notes per plant: who in development, quality, purchase and stores needs to know you, and what each needs to see.

The brochure that went to every gate

Imagine a sheet metal unit in SIDCUL Pantnagar pressing parts for one Tier 1 on a two-wheeler programme. The details are illustrative. When volumes dipped, the owner printed a 24-page brochure with every machine, a photograph of the founder and the line "we make all kinds of auto parts". He couriered it to the purchase departments of twenty units. Two called back, both asking for rates on castings he could not make.

The second attempt was smaller. He mapped fifteen units from the gate boards and what the plating shop told him. He picked four whose coming programmes used pressings in his range, and wrote each a one-page note that opened with its kind of part. Then the plating shop owner introduced him to a development engineer at a seating supplier. The engineer came, watched the press line run, and asked for samples of a bracket for a new programme. Sampling cost the unit two days of press time and a die modification it had not budgeted, and the first lot was rejected for a burr. The second was accepted. No order has followed yet.

When to start somewhere smaller

Never submitted PPAP documents or faced a supplier audit? Then do not lead with an OEM. Start with a Tier 1 that will develop you, or a non-auto unit whose paperwork is lighter, and build the record there. Read your supply agreement, too. If it limits what you may make for others, talk to your anchor before approaching its rivals.

Ten gate boards, then one note

Tomorrow, drive the estate and write down ten gate boards with what each unit makes. Pick the one whose next programme could use your machines, and write its note before you look for a second. If you want help with prospect research for the cluster, tell us what you need.