Job Shops Bid for Work online - A Message to Our Readers

Automotive Finishing, Winter, 2001

If you run a job shop, you know how hard it can be to keep a steady load of the right kind of work running through the shop. Or, if you buy finishing services, you know how hard it can be to find reliable providers. Job shops and buyers too often have trouble seeing beyond their existing relationships. You know there are alternatives out there. The problem is, how do you find them?

That's exactly what the new "Bid for Work" RFQ system at PF ONLINE is designed to do. Created in cooperation with ManufacturingQuote.com (Smyrna, Georgia), the Bid for Work system is a subscription-based service that brings buyers and sellers of job shop services together in an open collaborative environment. It's an efficient and cost effective way to connect buyers to finishers all over North America--with work that best fits a shop's equipment and process expertise.

What Is Bid For Work?

First, a word about what the Bid for Work isn't: It is not a "reverse auction" that isolates price as the single driver in the RFO process. There's too much of that going on already.

Bid for Work is an online marketplace consisting of buyers and job shops who are seeking a more efficient approach to the procurement process, and who want to reach beyond the geographical limits that typically constrain customer relationships. Buyers post RFQs with detailed job requirements--including part drawings, CAD files, and other documentation--and job shops search those jobs for work that best suits their capabilities and capacity.

Actually, the Bid for Work system is not entirely new. It is a further extension into finishing of the ManufacturingQuote network, which has served the custom manufacturing market for the last two years. Over 1,100 jobs totaling more than $31.5 million have been posted on the ManufacturingQuote network over the last six months alone, spanning a range of processes including general and precision machining, die and mold making, production and screw machine turning, forming and fabricating, rapid prototyping, finishing and manufacturing engineering services.

But the Bid for Work system is not just about connecting buyers and sellers. It's also designed to facilitate the two-way communication that is an essential component of the procurement process. It includes Collaborative Procurement Management (CPM) tools that allow companies to interact online on issues that require further communication during the quoting process. Suppliers have the opportunity to offer suggestions on manufacturability issues or to seek further clarification on technical or pricing requirements. The messaging system allows buyers and suppliers to communicate one-on-one, or buyers can post messages for all shops to read. It provides a common ground to exchange ideas and documentation without having to deal with data translation issues or the messy logistics of passing paper documentation back and forth.

Bid for Work also provides tools for both job shops and buyers to organize and manage their outstanding quotations within the network. RFQs can be grouped and sorted in a variety of ways--with summary reports as well as detailed RFQ pages--and job status or engineering change notifications can be distributed automatically. Buyers can release RFQs to the entire supplier network if they wish, or to a smaller group of suppliers of their own choosing. They can even limit their selection to a single shop, thereby gaining the advantages of the collaborative tools to augment the customer-supplier relationship.

Shops subscribe to Bid for Work for a flat annual fee, with no additional "pertransaction" charges. Suppliers and buyers are free to use any combination of online/offline communications they feel is appropriate to manage their business relationship. If a shop finds a new customer through the network, it can take additional orders entirely offline if desired, though we suspect that both buyers and suppliers will find that the convenience of managing the procurement process through this common environment will provide value in its own right, competitive bid or not.

As an introductory offer, job shops can sign-up for Bid For Work at PRODUCTS FINISHING ONLINE (www.pfonline.com) and may bid on jobs free of charge until February 15, 2002. Buyers can post jobs for bid for free at any time, once they've filled out the online buyer registration form.

Buyers Tools

For the buyer, Bid for Work provides the means to let out jobs for bid to multiple suppliers with a single task, and to get all quotes back in common format. The "RFQ Wizard" steps the buyer through the process, with easy-to-use fields for job data entry, and the ability to attach additional graphic documentation such as CAD files, PDF files, or other image scans. Proprietary information can be controlled though the selective inclusion of approved suppliers and/or with the use of Bid for Work's digital non-disclosure agreement. Once a job is posted, the buyer is automatically notified via e-mail when quotes are received. RFQ's can be managed individually, or organized by project or assembly, or by other logical groups. A variety of reports help suppliers analyze quotes by job, project, assembly or by supplier.