How Much is Customer Specification Driving Technology Selection for UK OEMs?

There are many large end users (mainly automotive, pharmaceutical, water treatment, etc) that will specify in detail what an OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) must use for automation products. This has obvious advantages for the end user in terms of spares, training and in-house capability, but can impact on cost and engineering time for the OEM.

We often find that in reality when engaging with OEMs, the level of specified technology is less than 30%, but they continue to use whatever manufacturer has been specified the most. They will use this technology for the rest of the machine build, without evaluating if the solution is the best in terms of performance and even cost. The easy route is just to copy what has previously happened. 

Our Packaged Solutions Team`s BOM (Bill of Materials) analysis process followed by a detailed machine audit can simply identify where cost savings and performance gains can be made. A resource is ready to deploy alongside the machine builder to ensure the speed of integration and transfer of technology. Whatever barriers there are with software and training can easily be removed with the right business case.

The specified business can then end up being the least desirable as we create a “standard (best performance / lowest cost) automation catalogue” for the more enlightened & profitable OEM.

We often ask management in these OEMs:-

“Are you here to make machines, or are you here to make money”

The answer is usually the later!

Brian Benson
Group Packaged Solutions Manager