DARIN · NEGOTIATE
A target price per part, built from material, machine, labour and setup time — with the cost drivers that explain the gap. The kind of number that holds up when a supplier pushes back.
THE NEGOTIATE LEVER
Most cost-savings numbers fall apart because five different things get called “savings”. DARIN quantifies the first two rungs and prepares the evidence for the third. The last two are earned in your contracts and your P&L — not in an analysis.
Setup cost is charged per production run, not per year. That is why the same annual volume can produce two very different piece prices — and why bundling is the lever that costs nothing in quality or delivery reliability.
The lot-size calculator recalculates the whole cost stack for a different batch size. Nothing about the part, the process or the plant changes; the setup simply stops being carried by a single piece. This is the lever that costs nothing in quality or delivery reliability.
Screenshots from a demonstration tenant, shown to make the mechanism visible. What the effect is worth on your parts depends on their setup share and current batch pattern — which is exactly what the calculation quantifies.
When quantity is not your lever
Which lever moves the price is a result of the analysis, not an assumption we bring with us. Two of our own cases point in opposite directions, and that is exactly why all five levers get quantified separately before anyone starts negotiating.
Energy sector · 50 turned parts
Microcontrollers · forklift carriages
Same method, opposite conclusions. Effort spent on the wrong lever is the most expensive kind of savings project.
Not a savings number to defend, but a per-part file: what the part should cost, where this supplier sits against that, why, and which questions to ask first.
For a supplier with should-cost coverage, the value chain is broken out: what sits in material, machine capital, energy, labour and overhead, and what sits above the should-cost. Alongside it, the regional drivers that explain why another location would be cheaper — machine capital, energy and labour, each separately.
Supplier names in the screenshot are pseudonymised. A share above should-cost is not automatically illegitimate margin — it is where the conversation starts, not the conclusion.
Nothing here assumes a supplier margin is illegitimate. Transparency cuts both ways — and a supplier who can follow your logic can also correct it.
You ask about a specific cost element instead of asking for a percentage. Suppliers respond differently to “your setup time looks high for this batch size” than to “we need 5%”.
When an increase is announced, the calculation shows which part of it is material, energy or labour — and which part is not explained. That turns an open dispute into a bounded one.
Once material is a separate line in the calculation, a material-price adjustment clause can be written and checked instead of argued about at every renewal.
The same breakdown that supports a negotiation also shows the supplier where a small design or process change would help both sides. Some of the best findings come back from them.
If you know what a longer commitment is worth in setup and capacity terms, you can trade it deliberately rather than give it away.
Gaps that are structural rather than commercial — an unsuitable machine, a poor route — are development topics. They pay off across every part that supplier makes for you.
A few more client results from the case library, each driven by the same markdown-based format.
Average savings potential identified in COVALYZE Fast Track and platform engagements since 2019. Identified potential is not the same as realised savings — actual results vary by commodity, supplier base, quantity structure and data quality.
A negotiation package for a single part is a one-day calculation. A whole commodity group with drawing extraction and a results walkthrough is the two-week Fast Track.
One part · known process · one business day
Send one drawing with its current price and quantities. You get the should-cost breakdown for that part, the levers that apply to it, and a target price you can put in front of a supplier.
One commodity group · up to 200 parts · two weeks
The fixed-scope way to buy the DARIN methodology. We extract your drawings, link them to spend data and deliver target prices, savings potential and negotiation evidence for a whole commodity group.
All commodities · platform access · ongoing
DARIN inside COVALYZE Analytics, used by your own team. Cost models stay live, new drawings flow in through PartIQ, and engineering, procurement and plants work from the same numbers.
A negotiation package is stronger when the technical levers have been priced too — because then you know which arguments the supplier can legitimately return.
Send one part or one commodity group with prices and quantities. You get target prices, the gap per supplier, the driver evidence and a negotiation corridor — plus a clear line between what is identified and what is realised.
