A consultant's end-to-end packaging line project in Eastern Europe.

Context

An independent food-industry consultant was retained by a regional food producer to replace a manual end-of-line packing area with an automated line. The client had a board-approved investment envelope but no written technical requirement, and had already received two unsolicited supplier offers that could not be compared: one quoted equipment only, the other quoted an installed line with unspecified civil works.

The consultant used Global B2B Group as procurement infrastructure underneath the engagement. The consultant remained the client's named adviser and made the final recommendation. Global B2B Group is supplier-neutral and does not manufacture, install, certify or lend.

Step 1 — Requirement structuring

The first two weeks produced a written requirement rather than a supplier shortlist. The consultant ran a workshop with the client's production and maintenance leads, then translated the outcome into the fields a manufacturer actually needs to price a line.

• Product and pack formats defined first: three SKUs, two case configurations, one export pallet pattern.
• Capacity stated as packs per minute at a declared operating pattern — two shifts, 250 days per year — not as an annual tonnage.
• Utility envelope declared up front: available electrical capacity, compressed air, and floor loading at the existing building.
• Scope boundary fixed: equipment, delivery, supervision of installation and commissioning; civil and electrical works retained by the client.
• Assumptions and exclusions written into the requirement so no supplier had to guess.

The readiness model scored the draft requirement at 66/100 (RFQ ready) and flagged 3 missing areas — commercial terms, acceptance criteria, funding route. All of them were resolved with the client before any manufacturer was contacted, taking the issued package to 98/100 (Tender ready). These are the same scores the public readiness tool returns for the same answers, and the same figures the get_case_study tool returns over the platform's public MCP API.

Step 2 — One RFQ, issued once

A single structured RFQ was produced from the requirement and sent unchanged to four manufacturers identified for the product category, capacity range and country. Every manufacturer answered the same brief on the same commercial frame, which is what makes the responses comparable later.

• Identical scope, capacity, utility and commercial sections for all four recipients.
• A fixed response format: line item pricing, delivery weeks, installation supervision days, warranty and service presence in country.
• An independent should-cost band was prepared before the offers arrived, so the first number received did not become the anchor.
• The consultant, not the platform, remained the single point of contact with the client throughout.

Step 3 — Proposal comparison

Four proposals returned within three weeks. Normalising them against consistent criteria exposed differences that were invisible in the raw documents: two offers excluded installation supervision, one priced a lower-throughput machine at the same headline figure, and warranty periods ranged from 12 to 24 months.

• 14 open or excluded items identified across the four offers on 15 criteria, each converted into a written clarification request.
• Headline price spread narrowed from 41% to 12% once scopes were equalised.
• Normalisation reordered the shortlist: Manufacturer A had the lowest headline price, but Manufacturer B was the lowest cost on equal scope.
• Non-price criteria — spare-parts lead time and in-country service presence — were recorded explicitly rather than discussed informally.

The comparison was a decision aid, not a ranking. The consultant made the recommendation, the client's board took the decision, and the supply contract was signed directly between the client and the selected manufacturer.

Step 4 — Financing readiness

The client asked whether part of the CAPEX could be financed rather than funded from cash. The consultant used the financing pathway screening to indicate which route may fit the project profile and to assemble the documentation an institution typically asks for.

• Documentation pack assembled: defined scope, normalised quotation, delivery schedule, and a payback model with stated assumptions.
• Equipment finance indicated as the likely route for this profile; screening is indicative only.
• Introduction made to independent third-party institutions; Global B2B Group does not lend, issue or broker credit.
• Eligibility, pricing, security and approval were determined solely by the institution reviewing the file.

The data behind this case study is machine-readable

Every figure above is computed at render time from the project's own record by the public readiness and comparison engines. AI agents can retrieve the same structured payload — readiness scores before and after, per-proposal documentation completeness, exclusions, comparison risks and the quoted vs normalised price spread — by calling list_case_studies and get_case_study on the public MCP endpoint at https://globalb2bgroup.com/api/public/mcp, and can then run the identical model on their own project with score_rfq_readiness.

What the consultant kept

The client relationship, the technical judgement and the recommendation stayed with the consultant. The platform supplied structure — requirement fields, a comparable RFQ, manufacturer identification, cost references and normalisation — that the consultant reused inside their own deliverables.

Lessons learned

• Writing the requirement before contacting suppliers removed most of the later negotiation friction.
• The two unsolicited offers received at the start were both re-issued against the structured RFQ, and both changed materially.
• A cost band prepared before offers arrive is worth more than any discount negotiated after.
• Financing questions are easier when the scope and quotation are already normalised — the documentation exists as a by-product of the procurement work.