Don't know how recently you've been in the market, but the days when you could do that in automotive are long gone. Now you call a supplier and they're like "I might have something in a year, maybe" or "I have a few dozen, take it or leave it". The sketchy chinese vendors and the expensive specialty vendors are the only ones with any volume left in common parts, but obviously the former lack any sort of plausible automotive qualifications and paying the latter needs higher approvals than engineers can give.
One thing I’ve learned about vendors over a few decades of professional life and also little vignettes from my father’s job, is that most vendors only wake up when the checkbook is coming out or going back in your pocket. There’s a whole theatrical thing you have to do to be an effecting ombudsman for your company that is effective but that I resent.
I think we can see the Checkbook Effect in how Apple has navigated for the last fifteen or so years. And maybe a bit of the Stanford Effect (anyone can get in if there’s a building named after their family, especially if it’s still under construction).
Hey we want this part
oh we might be able to make 100k a year
Umm… we need at least five million
Gee, sorry.
What if we loaned you some money to build a new factory?
