Quality, price, delivery time: the top priorities of German SMEs in component procurement in 2023

The online procurement platform for precision components CNC24 presents the results of its latest online survey on the state of the precast market. For the second year in a row, participants from German SMEs were surveyed, with 229 SMEs taking part in 2023.

While the requirements for the production of precision components have hardly changed in terms of quality, price and delivery reliability, there has been movement in the list of sourcing countries – which is creating new challenges.

Quality, price, delivery time: the top priorities of German SMEs in component procurement in 2023

Quality continues to be a priority for German companies: 63.3% of respondents state that quality is the most important factor for them when procuring components, followed by price and speed.

Only 5.7% accept a target of 35 days as an adequate delivery time for a production service provider, while 34.9% want to be supplied within 20 days.

The biggest challenges remain the high prices (59.4%), delivery difficulties (49.3%), adherence to delivery dates (48.5%), material bottlenecks (30.6%) and the uncertain economic outlook (29.7%).

The fact that 53.3% of SMEs surveyed see the economic outlook for their company as positive and 41.4% as neutral is almost contradictory. The goals for 2024 are to reduce procurement costs and delivery times and to increase adherence to delivery dates.

The fact that investments in automation hardly play a role at 8.7% is also confirmed by the unchanged figures for digitalization: neither the status of digitalization internally nor the reasons for the slow progress have changed in the last year.

China and India are becoming increasingly important as sourcing countries

However, there was movement in the regions from which components were sourced: Although Europe still leads with 78.2%, it has lost 20% compared to last year’s CNC24 survey.

China (33.6%) and North America (8.7%) recorded slight growth and India tripled to 12.2%.When asked which country will become more relevant, 29.7% of the answers were India and 24.9% China.

Download industry paper

About CNC24

CNC24, a brand of CNC24 GmbH, is a digital B2B procurement platform through which individual precision components can be sourced transparently and efficiently.

Manufacturers from 22 countries produce the mechanical components individually according to customer specifications. The manufacturing processes of the leading online marketplace for mechanical engineering include turning, milling, sheet metal processing and additive manufacturing.

With its innovative platform solution, the technology company creates a transparent process for the procurement of production parts and digitalizes the value chain through to a fully automated procurement process.

The company’s successful positioning as a partner for SMEs in the field of digitalization and innovation was confirmed in 2023 when it was awarded the German Excellence Award in the “Digital Startup Champions” category and the “Employer of the Future” seal. Thanks to its global network of suppliers, the company can guarantee free capacity, high material availability and on-time delivery of components at all times.

For quality control, all parts undergo an additional inspection process in the in-house measuring center before they are delivered. CNC24 was founded in 2019 by co-founders Willi Ruopp and Marlon Gerat. The start-up serves all industrial sectors with a need for production parts – from special machinery and plant engineering to IOT and medical, testing and measurement technology.