Internet bidding wins GBP 2.65 million subcontract

A Pathtrace Engineering Systems product story

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team May 20, 2002

Orders worth up to GBP 750,000 and the retention of an existing contract worth some GBP 1.9 million were won by turning subcontractor Rodmatic Precision Engineering through a recent Internet auction.

Orders worth up to GBP 750,000 and the retention of an existing contract worth some GBP 1.9 million were won by turning subcontractor Rodmatic Precision Engineering through a recent Internet auction staged by a US multinational company.

The auctioneers, selected and approved companies from around the world and during the two day event, around 38 different turning lots worth GBP 9.1 million were put out to bid.

Robert Rickman, Managing Director of Rodmatic said: "We won two additional lots valued at GBP 750,000 made up of some 200 different components in various batch sizes.

It was critical that our bidding was competitive to win additional work and retain an existing contract bringing the value of the orders to GBP 2.65 million".

Rodmatic, a division of Pathtrace based in Reading, was founded in 1963.

The company built its business around traditional multispindle autos and produced components, many on long, high volume contracts, for fluid power related companies.

Within the last year it has moved into smaller batch turning reducing change over times and installing a Traub and an Hitachi Seiki CNC lathe.

Pathtrace's award-winning EdgeCAM software has also been installed to optimise production cycles and maximise machine utilisation by programming off-line.

Robert Rickman said: "As relative newcomers to CNC machining we have found EdgeCAM is invaluable to work directly from a CAD file to machining metal.

Here EdgeCAM was critical in helping to win the Internet auction contracts as we could use the software to estimate cycle times for the different types of components".

He explained how bidding for contracts was a challenging event especially when a key existing contract was up for auction.

"However, our in-depth knowledge of the industry, new machines and the additional programming software made it possible to secure our existing work and even add another GBP 750,000 of business".

He described the two-day event which involved training on how to bid, followed by a dry run.

"We had to identify the lots to bid for, determine the methods of manufacture and produce cost breakdowns within set price limits.

We then registered our interest, had 30 minutes to provide a company profile and were sent the official 'bidware' over the Internet".

Rodmatic had to log on to the site half an hour before the bidding started and competing suppliers could place their bids at any time.

As the different lots were progressively worked through, the companies bidding could follow the downward trend of prices pitched by competitors to attempt to secure the contract.

After the bid was closed, Rodmatic and the other companies, that had posted the lowest three prices for each contract were then requested to provide full cost breakdown information to the customer.

The contracts were confirmed within a few weeks of the event.