In Parts 1(A) and 1(B), we explored the Incoming RFQ—what happens when a customer asks a supplier to quote. In this article, we shift perspective to the Outgoing RFQ—what happens before an OEM decides which suppliers should receive that RFQ in the first place.
At first glance, this appears to be a much simpler problem. Most OEMs have approved vendor lists, ERP systems, supplier scorecards and years of purchasing history.
Finding suppliers isn't difficult. Choosing the right supplier is.
Three Decisions Every Outgoing RFQ Demands
Every sourcing decision ultimately comes down to three questions.
1. Who should receive this RFQ?
Not every supplier is equally capable. Some have manufactured similar parts before. Some have the right machines but not the right tolerances. Others may have delivered similar work successfully—but for a completely different business unit, customer or programme. The first challenge isn't finding suppliers. It's identifying the suppliers with proven experience relevant to this engineering problem.
2. What is a commercially reasonable price?
For decades, procurement teams have relied on historical prices, spreadsheets and should-cost models to answer this question. All are valuable but none tell the complete story. Historical prices explain the past. Manufacturing physics explains what should happen. Market conditions explain the present. The sourcing challenge is bringing these together into a commercial position that can be defended—not simply calculated.
3. Which supplier gives us the greatest confidence to award the business?
Most procurement teams try to balance quality and cost. However, the best decisions go beyond. They balance engineering capability, commercial competitiveness, supplier performance, quality history, delivery reliability and business risk. Every award decision is ultimately an exercise in confidence.
The Human Limit
Experienced buyers remember suppliers they've worked with; engineers remember difficult jobs; procurement teams remember negotiations that went well—and those that didn't. But no individual remembers thousands of suppliers, tens of thousands of parts and years of manufacturing history.
Human experience is invaluable. It simply doesn't scale.
The System Limit
Enterprise systems remember everything. Purchase Orders. Supplier Scorecards. Inspection Reports. Invoices. Quality Records. Yet every one of these records exists in isolation. One system knows suppliers. Another knows costs. Another knows quality. Another knows production. None understand that they all describe the same engineering problem.
The result is familiar: Every new sourcing decision begins almost from scratch—even though the organisation has solved similar problems many times before.
Confidence: The Art and Science of Sourcing
The sourcing challenge isn't about finding data. It's about connecting evidence. Every supplier quote should be evaluated through multiple independent sources of evidence:
Historical engineering outcomes.
Supplier performance.
Manufacturing capability.
Commercial history.
Manufacturing physics.
Current market conditions.
Individually, each provides only part of the picture. Together, they create something far more valuable: Cost Confidence.
Cost Confidence is not a single "correct" price. It's not another should-cost estimate. It's a commercially defensible negotiation range supported by engineering evidence.
So instead of asking: What should this part cost? the better question becomes,
How confident are we that this quotation is commercially reasonable?
That small shift changes the nature of procurement. Negotiations move from opinion to evidence.
This Is Where ShapeSense Fits
ShapeSense doesn't replace procurement expertise. It gives procurement teams access to decades of engineering and commercial learning at the moment sourcing decisions are made. When an outgoing RFQ is created, the objective isn't simply to identify suppliers. It's to answer better questions:
Which suppliers have successfully manufactured similar engineering families?
What commercial outcomes followed?
How did similar parts perform across quality, cost and delivery?
Where are the strongest negotiation opportunities?
Which quotation deserves the greatest confidence?
The best sourcing teams won't simply issue RFQs faster. They'll issue smarter RFQs. Because every supplier interaction, every quotation, every negotiation and every production outcome becomes evidence that strengthens the next sourcing decision.
That is how commercial intelligence compounds.
In Part 2(B), Aditi explores the technical foundations behind Cost Confidence—how multiple independent sources of engineering, manufacturing and commercial evidence are synthesised into decision confidence for procurement teams.