A Name on a List Is Not a Fallback

Most procurement files we see at Brimic carry a second-source line. It is usually completed. Occasionally it is completed well. More often it names a company that was visited once, quoted a job some years ago and has not been contacted since. The name sits in the approved supplier list, and because it sits there, nobody asks the question that actually matters: has this company ever made this part?

That question is uncomfortable, because the honest answer is frequently no.

Approval is a status, not a capability

The word 'approved' does a great deal of quiet work in UK supply chains. It may mean that a supplier passed a quality audit, that its ISO 9001 certificate is current, that a buyer met its technical manager at an exhibition in Birmingham, or simply that someone added the company to a spreadsheet and nobody has since removed it. None of these things demonstrates that the supplier can hold a 0.02 mm bore position on a cast aluminium housing, in the quantity required, by the date required.

Capability is specific. It belongs to a part, a tolerance band, a material, a machine, a shift pattern and a particular month. A list entry is general and undated. The gap between the two is where contingency plans quietly expire.

Why a dormant source fails at the worst moment

A second source that has never run the job tends to fail for reasons that are entirely predictable and almost never priced in.

The first is time. A supplier starting from cold must programme, prove, tool and inspect before the first conforming part exists. On a moderately complex prismatic component that is commonly four to eight weeks, and that assumes a machine is free. If the primary supplier has just entered administration, the buyer's need is immediate, while the backup's lead time begins on the day the enquiry lands rather than the day the crisis began.

The second is knowledge. Fixtures, probing routines and machining sequences refined over years with the incumbent are not transferable documents; they are working assumptions held by people. A new supplier receives a drawing and a model and starts from first principles. Features that the incumbent learned to machine in a particular order, because otherwise the part moves, will be rediscovered slowly and at the buyer's expense.

The third is commercial. A supplier asked to mobilise at short notice, from a standing start, on a part it has never made, will price accordingly. The buyer's negotiating position on that day is weak, and both parties know it.

What a genuine contingency plan contains

There is nothing wrong with holding a second source on paper. The error lies in treating the paper as the plan. Four pieces of evidence separate a real fallback from a hopeful one.

A current first article

Not a first article from 2019 against a superseded revision. A first article produced against the current issue, inspected dimensionally and recorded with the equipment used. For genuinely critical parts this may mean paying a supplier to make a small batch purely to prove the process — an unglamorous expense that is considerably cheaper than a stopped line.

Tooling that exists, or is firmly quoted

Where a part needs bespoke fixtures or form tools, the backup should either hold them or possess a firm quotation to produce them, with a stated lead time. 'We would make them when needed' is not a plan; it is an intention.

A material route

Castings, forgings and specific grades of stainless or aluminium alloy are frequently harder to obtain than machining capacity itself. The backup needs a named material source, an agreed specification and some evidence of when that route was last exercised. A certificate of conformity is only useful if the material exists to accompany it.

A capacity statement with a date on it

A short written confirmation — refreshed annually — setting out the volume the backup could absorb, from when, and on what assumptions. It need not be contractual, but it must be dated and signed, because the value of the document lies entirely in its currency.

Exercise the plan while it is still cheap

The most reliable test of a second source is to give it work. A modest transfer — one part number, one low-volume run, one periodic order — keeps the relationship commercially live, keeps the supplier's knowledge current and gives the buyer performance data rather than an audit impression.

Where a full transfer is impractical, a tabletop exercise is better than nothing: ask the backup to quote a live part against the current drawing package and to confirm capacity and lead time, then compare that response with the incumbent's. The exercise costs an afternoon. Running it for the first time during a crisis costs a great deal more.

What belongs in the purchasing record

Buyers who take this seriously tend to record, for each critical part, the named backup, the date it last made the part or a comparable one, the drawing revision to which its approval refers, the tooling position and the date of the most recent capacity confirmation. It is a short set of fields, and it converts a name in a spreadsheet into a defensible position.

None of this argues against dual sourcing, nor against maintaining approved supplier lists. It argues for honesty about what such lists prove. A second source that has never cut metal to the drawing is not a contingency; it is a note that a contingency might one day be possible. The difference only becomes visible when the primary supplier stops answering the telephone.