As a Senior Buyer or a Procurement Officer in the aerospace community, you are tasked with preparing and submitting Requests for Quotes (RFQ) and evaluating vendor responses to determine if they meet company standards. Misquoted or delayed RFQs from vendors, manufactures, and repair Stations can cost your company time and money.
It is important to delivery timelines that you provide your customers the correct, high quality materials, and that materials are delivered on time by completing RFQs and getting accurate, timely responses. When it comes to RFQs for repairs of electronic, mechanical, and electro-mechanical components, you need to identify the best vendor or repair resource consistent with cost, quality, and delivery requirements, while at the same time reducing delays due to misquoted or incomplete proposals.
Inaccurate or delayed quotes affect your ability to do your job. These delays can often be the result of a vendor, manufacturer, or a repair station simply not having all the details necessary for them to produce a proper response to your RFQ. What information should you provide that should net you a timely and accurate reply?
Include these details into your RFQ
- Part number(s) – if there are alternate part numbers, include all of them. For example, if Raytheon manufactured something for the F-16, which is a Lockheed product, Lockheed likely assigned a part number, as well. Include both part numbers in this situation.
- NSN – Not all items are stocklisted by the Department of Defense. However, when they have an assigned NSN, include the NSN. Sometimes, two very different items can have the same part number, which can result in a very inaccurate quote. An NSN ensures that part number similarities do not affect the accuracy of the quote.
- Item Description – Ensure the description of the item is as accurate as possible. For instance, “Modular Mission Computer” is more descriptive than “Computer” or “Electronics Components Assembly”.
- Photos – Pictorial evidence of item failure and condition are often very useful in either describing the root cause of failure or simply illustrating the overall condition of the asset. In extreme situations, photos provided with the RFQ can even allow the repair source to advise the requester on scope or even feasibility of repair.
- Failure Information – This is perhaps the most important unique information for repair quotations. The reason for removal or cause of failure description has significant impact on a repair quotation, especially if the repair source is quoting firm fixed pricing. For example, if the reason for removal for a head-up display (HUD) is a cracked combiner, the repair source can quote based on that specific failure description. However, if the requester does not specify the failure or simply says “Failed”, the repair source must assume a more extensive and costly repair scope other than just a cracked combiner. Because of this, accurate, descriptive failure information is critical to ensuring an accurate, low risk quotation.
To best serve your company’s operations and supply chains, you need timely and accurate responses to your requests for quotes. Following these tips above for your RFQs, along with identifying the companies that respond quickly, will enable you to foster business relationships that help you reach your goals.
For over 33 years, Duotech has solved the engineering, reverse engineering, repair and re-manufacturing problems of military and civilian agencies, as well as aerospace and commercial users of electronic and electromechanical equipment.
Duotech has provided high quality services to assist our customers in keeping major programs operating on schedule and within budget costs. Available today at competitive prices, we deliver on shorter schedules than our competitors and, most importantly, higher quality to meet our customer’s requirements.
