A chrome plated rod quote that includes freight and one that doesn't will look very different on the unit price line, and comparing them directly — as if the difference in unit price equals the difference in total cost — is one of the most persistent errors in industrial raw material procurement. A
A decision to switch honed tube suppliers rarely happens cleanly. By the time a procurement team has qualified the new supplier, negotiated terms, and confirmed lead times, there are almost always units from the outgoing supplier still sitting in warehouse inventory — material that was purchased at
A chrome plated rod supplier requesting a fifty-percent deposit before production begins is not automatically unreasonable — but it's also not a term a buyer should accept without understanding what's behind the request. The deposit percentage a supplier asks for reveals more about their own cash fl