2025 Review – The New Reality in Technical Parts Procurement

A look at this year's key topics reveals a clear picture: while 2025 brought significantly stabilized price levels, transformation dominated the past 12 months. Profound shifts in international supply chains, new regulatory requirements, and persistent market volatility meant that procurement had to deliver far more than negotiating unit prices. Traditional mindsets and approaches quickly reached their limits. Almost simultaneously, procurement professionals had to evolve into risk managers and value-creation partners. The commitment and effort paid off handsomely. This increasingly applies to the deployment of artificial intelligence tools across more and more organizations. Looking ahead to 2026's trends and technologies, these transformative times show no signs of slowing—but that's a story for another time (in January).

A clear realization came to the forefront in 2025: traditional cost comparison falls short. Total Landed Cost or Total Cost of Ownership models are now considered best practice (though they're not yet standard in mid-sized companies). The true costs of a technical part only become apparent when inspection efforts, setup times, scrap rates, and total programming requirements are factored in. Add to this logistics and customs costs, currency fluctuations, and rising energy costs. Even the initial impacts of the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) are steadily growing in importance.

The bottom line: companies that consistently apply TLC or more comprehensively TCO can present robust arguments—pure price lists no longer suffice, neither to executive management nor to controlling.

The old hope that supply chains could simply normalize after the pandemic, energy crisis, and geopolitical turbulence was dashed in 2025. While individual lead times have eased, uncertainty and risk remain constant companions. Notably, specialized CNC service providers are experiencing significant capacity peaks, and complex manufacturing orders can become problematic due to personnel or material shortages. Procurement professionals had to quickly learn to define lead times as binding award criteria, establish clarity on express surcharges, and enforce escalation rules in emergency processes. The discussion around nearshoring and European backup suppliers is more present than ever for safety-critical or particularly high-value parts.

The question of quality has also become more rigorous. Gut feeling no longer suffices. Instead, measurable criteria matter today. Suppliers are increasingly selected based on whether they deliver comprehensible capability data and inspection protocols, and how they handle complaints. Particularly for components with high criticality and value, companies pay close attention to whether responses to errors are not only swift but also open and structured. Complaint rates have become fixed metrics in supplier evaluation, and the costs of error correction must be transparently presented.

The technical quality of drawings has become an underestimated cost factor. Many procurement professionals experienced how carelessly maintained or overly complex drawing documentation led to additional work, inquiries, quote variations, and ultimately avoidable additional costs. Companies are responding with systematic design-to-cost workshops and tight approval processes where procurement, engineering, and suppliers jointly verify feasibility and functionality. A key learning of the year: if you don't have your drawing data under control, you'll pay for it later in procurement.

Supplier portfolios are being deliberately streamlined. Procurement organizations are focusing less on volume and increasingly on strategically aligned partners. Dead-weight entries without added value are consistently eliminated, dual-sourcing strategies for critical part families are activated, and collaboration with a few key suppliers is expanded. Simultaneously, anonymous platform providers and broker models are viewed more critically when transparency about manufacturing locations and quality processes is lacking.

Increasingly, integrated cockpits combine existing ERP and SRM data with quality and capacity information from various systems. When this creates a clear picture of price developments, risks, and critical part families, it strengthens procurement organizations' steering capability. Without clean master data and clearly defined metrics, however, any analytical approach remains ineffective. The years when only fragmented Excel evaluations were available are numbered—at least where integrated cockpits have been implemented. The truth is also: many companies still have this step ahead of them.

Digital marketplaces like Techpilot and specialized sourcing platforms are no longer passive tender portals in 2025. They support procurement organizations in benchmarking, supplier research, and strategic tendering of entire part families. Those who use platforms systematically can specifically identify new suppliers, compare price and capacity levels across regions, and gain more transparency about competencies and certifications. The integration of e-procurement solutions with ERP and SRM is clearly accelerating.

In 2025, AI in technical parts procurement became reality in initial companies. Around 20% of manufacturing companies are already deploying industrial AI, according to ZVEI in a recent study—trend increasing. The difference from 'mere digitization': data isn't just visualized but translated into concrete decisions.

In supplier search, for example, AI algorithms 'match' drawings, materials, tolerances, and quantities with technology and competency profiles.

Demand simulations link sales forecasts, bills of materials, and project pipelines, showing bottlenecks or overcapacities early.

Quote automation reads drawings, classifies components, and derives price bands, allowing standard requests to run semi-automatically.

In parallel, AI-powered systems monitor contracts, delivery performance, and risk indicators, feeding continuous risk monitoring.

At the same time, it's clear: without clean data, governance, and human judgment, the advantage tips into risk—precisely where many companies' current 'AI dilemma' manifests.

The sustainability topic established itself as an award criterion in 2025 among many larger industrial companies and is increasingly pressuring mid-sized manufacturing operations to follow suit. The CO₂ footprint of materials, complete supply chain documentation, and ESG- and CBAM-relevant information for imported parts shape supplier selection. Companies have revised their questionnaires, audits, and scorecards accordingly. Mid-sized manufacturing operations in particular now face the challenge of making their energy consumption, emission data, and compliance processes visible. Suppliers who deliver too little here are coming under increasing pressure.

Risk is no longer an abstract strategic topic but a daily companion in procurement. Dependence on individual regions, political uncertainties, and fluctuating energy prices create pressure to act. Skilled labor shortages at European CNC operations are driving the search for alternatives and new cluster models for both critical and non-critical part families. Proactive inventory management, flexible contract design, and targeted escalation plans have become the new normal. Even if risk management incurs costs—a lack of risk management can mean a complete production shutdown.

Cross-functional collaboration in procurement has gained significant momentum. Isolated decisions are barely practical anymore—especially when engineering demands tight tolerances or exotic materials, quality defines high inspection requirements, and suppliers contribute their own manufacturing reality. Wherever cross-functional rounds have been established for critical parts or assemblies, cost drivers can be identified, quality requirements can be defined functionally and realistically, and supplier knowledge can be leveraged early. Procurement professionals benefit when they bring all relevant departments to the table—the results are often lower costs, reduced risks, and better supply capability.

The review of 2025 shows that technical parts procurement has become substantially more complex—but simultaneously more shapeable. Those who consistently consider all cost components, actively manage suppliers and risks, systematically maintain drawing data, and don't simply wait out regulatory requirements will secure a noticeable competitive advantage in the coming year as well. And increasingly comprehensively, with the power of artificial intelligence.