Nitinol sourcing: partner selected at about half the incumbent's manufacturing cost
As it approached commercialisation, a Nitinol device company had a single manufacturing price from its incumbent, and nobody could take that price apart.
The company needed a single partner for everything from engineering transfer to global distribution.
Opyflow mapped specialist manufacturers, ran one common tender and broke every quote down into its cost components.
Manufacturing partner selected · About 50% below the incumbent's cost for the same scope · Transfer, validation and supply terms defined
The challenge
There was no competing offer to compare the incumbent's price with. The commitment would be long term and the product had not yet shipped, so accepting the quote as it stood meant depending on one manufacturer at a price the company could not test.
Opyflow's work
The search started from what the product needs: Nitinol laser cutting, braiding, laser welding, thermal treatment, cleanroom manufacturing and a certified medical-device quality system. Opyflow mapped specialist manufacturers against those requirements, shortlisted the qualified candidates and wrote one request for proposal. It covered engineering transfer, process redevelopment, tooling, equipment and process qualification, commercial production, purchasing, quality assurance and global distribution. Opyflow's review of each proposal checked cleanroom compliance, sterilisation scope, validation evidence, surge capacity, landed-cost terms and price escalation. Finally every quote was split into factory cost, supply-chain charge and commercial additions, which made the economics behind each total visible.
What changed
The company chose its manufacturing partner from credible alternatives. Capability gaps came to light during evaluation, before the award. Because factory cost was shown separately from commercial additions, leadership could see what made up the price it accepted. Transfer, qualification and commercial production will run on the terms set in the tender.
What made the proposals comparable?
Opyflow wrote the scope once, and every bidder priced the same transfer, qualification, production, quality and distribution work against it, on the same technical, quality and commercial basis. That let the totals be set side by side, and because the tender priced the whole scope, its result was a manufacturing partner as well as a price.
See the capability: Strategic sourcing and tendering →
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