The Thomas Blog

THOMASNET.com Version 3 Is Now Live!

Business never shuts off — a supplier evaluation is performed every 2 seconds on THOMASNET.com! We are constantly developing new ways for engineers, procurement managers, and MROs to better access data on the platform. That's why we just launched THOMASNET.com Version 3.

The following is an overview of the improvements included in this release:

What Procurement Managers Must Understand About Industrial Suppliers

Industrial suppliers are not mind readers. Shocking, I know!

Yet each day they are pressed into service to determine exactly what a buyer needs with sparingly little information. They do their best to provide specs of their parts, CAD files, dimensional data, performance curves, videos, comparison tables, machine lists, and capability descriptions but the procurement teams always have unanswered questions.

As an industrial buyer, it is your job to bring the clearest questions possible. Here are a few facts to have on hand before contacting a supplier:

Four Good Reasons To Reshore Your Supply Chain

Reshoring your supply chain means you decrease your dependence on countries in other parts of the world. For example, if you’re building an automobile, you might assemble it in America, but if the bolts for the engine come from China, you’ll have to wait for them to ship across the Pacific Ocean. This could result in disruptions to your production schedule.

And, with production so far away, how could you ensure that the quality is up to par? If this isn’t enough reason to reshore your supply chain, here are four more:

How Procurement Managers Can Break Out of the “No Quote” Blues

“Not for us.” “Volume is too low.” “We can’t do that size.”

You’ve heard every excuse possible. No matter how hard you try, sometimes it feels like you will never find a custom manufacturing supplier that will even give you a quote, never mind actually produce the parts you need. In an economy that has folks pushing to maximize every opportunity, it seems very counter intuitive that we would see this many possible jobs get turned down, doesn’t it?

11 Tips to Help Identify a Reliable Supplier

When starting your research to identify a new supplier, the knee jerk reaction is to look for the best price to lower cost. However, it is more important to look for the long term value of your partnership with this supplier.