Cyient is known for its range of flexibility in the manufacturing space, particularly in printed circuit board assemblies (PCBAs). Its engineering and design-led manufacturing (DLM) solutions are meeting high standards for safety, reliability and performance in a variety of industries including aerospace, defense, transportation, medical technologies, utilities and communications. The company is very “high mix,” meaning they specialize in integrating many different assemblies at lower volumes. While Cyient has found their niche in the EMS market, it was essential for them to automate quoting practices.
Steady but slow
Cyient’s customers have always agreed: the company manufactures highly engineered products with exceptional quality. But nobody was raving about their speed, admits Rick Palm, Vice President of Global Supply Chain and Program Management for Cyient DLM. When a customer approached them about making an assembly, “it could be a slow and cumbersome process,” he says.
Company sourcing representatives would reach out to various electronics distributors around the world in support of their inbound quote activity, initiating a painfully inefficient process that could take weeks. Sadly, issues related to long lead times, obsolescence, and large minimum buy requirements would not be discovered until the end of the process. They knew they could do better if they had more time and wanted to speed up the process.
“Automation in procurement is vital. You need to automate transactional services—like finding a part—and focus your professionals on more strategic commodities, categories and negotiating the best price and terms.”
Rick Palm, Vice President of Global Supply Chain & Program Management
Cyient DLM
Improving response time
As Palm tapped colleagues in his network, it was apparent that Orbweaver was well-known and respected in the EMS industry. “They have all the contacts—all these electronics distributors—they have the technology, they know who to go to immediately, and they know all the commodities of different vendors,” he explains. “They are a knowledgeable resource and became a great partner for us.”
Orbweaver developed for Cyient a custom quote workflow built on the Orbweaver DataHub Platform. The solution allows users to automatically capture pricing and availability data, applying custom markup and margin calculations. This was a huge upgrade from its previous process using other well known quoting tools in the market, which Palm describes as a “churn,” and then, more candidly, “a painful inefficient process.”
“Our group was on a treadmill doing the same thing over and over and over,” Palm notes of their manual processes to find parts: “It was hunt and peck, hunt and peck,” manually looking for various parts on the Internet.
With Orbweaver, Cyient simply takes the customer bill of materials, uploads it into the Orbweaver system, and quickly receives the part prices and lead times specific to Cyient. “We’re able to respond to that customer’s RFQ in just minutes with a benchmark price at the beginning of the RFQ process or for current customer demand asking for upside or pull-in.” Palm explains. “This helps our supply chain and program management teams to improve customer service.”
Bolt-on agility
Orbweaver has provided not just operational speed, but strategic agility. Since Cyient is able to get the initial parts pricing and information about potentially problematic parts in just minutes, Cyient is able to immediately call suppliers to resolve long lead times, alternate components, and minimum buy requirements much earlier in the process. Tactical inefficiency has been replaced with strategic benefits.
Furthermore, when a customer reaches out to say they need more product or the product sooner than planned, Cyient can both approach its current supplier about availability and upload the requirements into the system to see where else it may be available, and for what price.
“We have more options, which allows us to support our existing customers better,” Palm says.
With the automated price quoting, Cyient can get this important information without needing to hire more people in different parts of the world.
“We’re just able to find the parts, and much quicker. The benefits were immediately apparent.”
Palm also uses the solution to gain clarity on price elasticity, leveraging data regarding price breaks and potential strategic investments in inventory availability. If he needs 100 of a particular part, he’ll explore availability at higher quantities and weigh the benefits and costs of buying into potential future demand. Strategically, it’s a quick, simple way to gather information and expand options.
Productive partnerships
Quote automation is advantageous for all participants in the supply chain. Cyient’s distribution partners are also benefiting from Cyient’s use of automated digital resources such as application programming interfaces (APIs). Tom Galligani, Global Vice President of Supply Chain at Future Electronics, says that there have been a lot of challenges associated with traditional quote processing due to the need to convert Excel spreadsheets into a format appropriate for importing.
“Our customer, Cyient, is now using the API to get information from Future—and other distributors— almost instantaneously. Being able to communicate information back and forth in seconds is really the ‘wow’ of this whole process,” he says. “This response would have taken them weeks, with 5 to 10 times the amount of people that typically handle it.”
The quote automation technology allows Cyient to manage the flow of information rapidly and efficiently, yielding numerous benefits both for them and their distribution partners, Galligani says, noting that one of their biggest challenges with their customers is typically unclean part information. “With APIs, if the customer doesn’t have a clean part number, the record gets returned as ‘not recognized.’ So this is really driving a lot of process improvements in our industry,” he says, and with a low opportunity cost. “The implementation with Cyient was probably the easiest one that we’ve ever done in my time managing the E- commerce activity for our supply chain customers.”
“It’s ‘wins’ all around,” Galligani continues. “We fully expect this will continue to evolve with Cyient and other customers, as we all get better and better at what we do as partners.”
Scalability and success
Speed is another reason Cyient has found a successful partner in Orbweaver. Regarding implementation, the quote tool was up and running with two of the top five suppliers in the world within two days. The balance of the “top 10” took another couple months due to business processes unrelated to Orbweaver.
“It was relatively low cost and simple to implement. I’m using it regularly to run RFQs for our team and I’m not a tech guy,” Palm admits.
After deployment, and some quick training, the user can upload the bill of materials quickly and easily to view the available parts from different suppliers right away. This solution is highly scalable for any buyer, bringing major “power to the fingertips of our whole group,” Palm says.
Modern supply chain management must be mindful of Industry 4.0 principles related to digitization and automation. Cyient’s own strategic initiatives in this regard are focused on efficient business processes, enhanced real-time communication, and delivering value-add benefits for the customer. Cyient’s robust utilization of technology includes the soon-to-be implemented Kinaxis Rapid Response Advanced Planning System, augmented in part with solutions provided by Orbweaver, to include demand and supply plan scenarios to customers prior to execution. Looking toward logical next steps, Orbweaver’s purchase automation solutions will be a consideration as Cyient continues to invest in their supply chain management platform.
“Orbweaver knows so much about the EMS world, including the intricacies of the key vendors in the electronics space,” Palm concludes. “Parts and vendors are a real ecosystem, and if I just went to a software vendor, they wouldn’t understand any of this.”
Together, let’s make the electronics industry more agile, more efficient, and more relevant today. And let’s sell more parts.
