How an industrial electronics manufacturer cut BOM costs by 22% - without changing a single component
Most procurement managers assume they're getting competitive pricing. They have supplier relationships, they've run RFQs, they know the market. Then they see the numbers.
Original cost
$120K
Before Autobom
After Autobom
$94K
Same components
Total saved
$26K
22% reduction
What actually happened
No design changes. No alternates. Just better pricing.
A US-based industrial electronics manufacturer came to Autobom with a production BOM they'd been sourcing through existing channels. No obvious problems. No supply issues. Just a BOM they'd been buying the same way for a while.
The saving came entirely from one thing: structured competitive pressure across suppliers. Most procurement teams source the way they've always sourced - preferred distributors, established relationships, historical pricing never stress-tested against the current market. That's not negligence. It's bandwidth.
"Pricing drifts. What was competitive two years ago often isn't today. And because nobody ran the comparison, nobody noticed."
When Autobom benchmarks a BOM, we run simultaneous RFQs across multiple supplier channels - authorized distributors, regional suppliers, global sourcing partners - and use that competition to drive pricing down. This manufacturer was buying the right components. They just weren't buying them at the right price.
Why it matters
Same components. Zero risk.
Every component on this BOM was identical before and after. Same manufacturer, same part number, same specification. This matters because the usual objection to cost reduction is risk.
No engineering involvement required
Alternate components need qualification. Substitutions need sign-off. Design changes create schedule risk. None of that applied here. The savings came purely from supplier competition - zero disruption to the existing supply chain, zero engineering involvement, zero risk to production.
The timeline
Quote in three days. Components in two to three weeks.
BOM submitted
Customer uploads BOM. Autobom's internal sourcing engine begins analysis immediately.
Supplier RFQs run - days 1 to 3
Simultaneous outreach across authorized distributors, regional suppliers, and global sourcing partners. Quote comparison and price normalisation handled by the engine.
Quote delivered - day 3
Full BOM quote delivered to the customer for review and confirmation.
Components delivered - 2 to 3 weeks
From order confirmation. Often earlier.
The hidden cost
The labour cost most teams don't account for
Running a competitive RFQ manually across a large production BOM isn't just slow - it's expensive in person-hours. A procurement buyer chasing quotes from multiple suppliers, following up on non-responses, normalising pricing across different quote formats, and comparing lead times across a full BOM can easily spend two to three weeks on the exercise.
At a fully-loaded cost of even $40–50 per hour, that's a meaningful overhead on top of whatever component pricing they land on.
Manual RFQ process
2–3 weeks of procurement buyer time. Supplier chasing, quote normalisation, price comparison - all manual.
Autobom's sourcing engine
Supplier outreach, quote collection, and price comparison run systematically in the background. One person. Three days.
The $26,000 component saving is the headline. The recovered procurement bandwidth is the additional benefit that doesn't show up in the BOM cost - but does show up in what your team can focus on instead.
The bigger picture
When did you last benchmark your BOM competitively?
A $26,000 saving on one BOM is significant. But the more important question is: how many BOMs does your organisation run per year, and when did you last stress-test the pricing?
Component pricing is not static. It moves with demand cycles, raw material costs, capacity constraints, and geopolitical factors. A BOM that was competitively sourced 18 months ago may have significant savings available today - and you won't know until you run the comparison.
Ready to find out?
Want to know what's available on your current BOM?
Upload your BOM and we'll identify cost reduction opportunities across your components - same specs, no disruption to your supply chain.
We only succeed when you save. No savings, no success.