Sometimes, procurement staff receive some special requests from the project team, even though the project hasn’t started and is still in the initial quotation evaluation stage. At this stage, the drawings of the product itself haven’t even come out yet, but because the quotation requires calculating the cost of foam liners for packaging or foam pallets for production, the project team casually provides the procurement staff with the product’s length, width, and height, and then asks the foam manufacturer to give a quotation based on those dimensions.
But can the foam manufacturer give a reasonable price with only these dimensions? The answer is: 1) If it’s only for the foam material, then a correct price can actually be quoted; 2) If it’s for EVA liners that match the product or for EVA foam pallets for special purposes, the price based solely on length, width, and height may differ by several times.
Let’s explain in detail. In the first case, with the length, width, and height of the material, the material usage can be easily calculated, and with the procurement quantity, the cost per unit can be determined according to the MOQ. So if it’s just about purchasing materials, the information provided by the project team is enough. But in most cases, do we purchase the materials and make the packaging ourselves? Definitely not. If we could make the packaging ourselves, there would be no need to inquire with the factory from the beginning. In other words, what the project team really needs are finished EVA liners or finished EVA foam pallets. This is the second case. The structure of the liner or pallet, the thickness of the edges, the depth of the bottom, whether it is one-piece molded, single-sided processing or multi-sided processing, etc., different structures require different processing techniques, which results in different processing times. This is why the prices of liners and pallets of the same size can vary by several times or even more.
Procurement staff are actually quite helpless. The project team insists on getting a price, but they don’t have enough information about the requirements. So they ask the factory to provide a reference price first. However, the factory cannot provide an effective price based on such limited information.
Is it possible to get the project team to provide more information? Since the project has specific requirements, they must have a certain concept of the product prototype. Asking them for prototype drawings or sketches, or even pictures of similar products, can make the quotations for liners and pallets closer to reality. Therefore, if possible, procurement staff should first ask the project team to provide more information, and then inquire with the factory, which can more quickly yield the answers needed by both procurement and the project, allowing the project to move forward faster and more effectively.
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