Thanks,
Our company is rather large, we probably purchase 6-9 million a year in custom farbricated metal parts(not machined - bending, lasercutting, and welding only). Our puchasing group has contacts at 5 large metal vendors in the US, although we typically deal with only 2 of them. My personal opion is that our purchasing group is horrilbe, but I wanted to get some outside feedback before I spent an absorbant amount of time researching this perticular issue.
I am also inclined to think our purchasing group is the real problem becuase we also have a difficult time recieving pricing, sometimes up to a week from submission of mechanical drawings. Which ultimately leaves a viarable(sometimes 50% of the end price) in the pricing for our clients.