Thinking ahead in procurement: how Grossenbacher Systeme AG is reshaping supplier management with Luminovo

A customer asks for a qualification record. A certificate expires without anyone noticing. An audit week swallows the procurement team for days. For most EMS companies, this is the quiet cost of growth: more compliance documentation, more regulation, more reporting obligations, all on top of the day job.

Grossenbacher Systeme AG is an EMS partner with over 400 active suppliers across three sites in Germany, Switzerland, and the Czech Republic. Rather than chase the shift, the company chose to get ahead of it. Together with Luminovo, Grossenbacher is building a supplier relationship management approach that keeps pace with what customers, auditors, and regulators now expect.

"We've done well with our previous approach. But the transparency and audit readiness we're building now is a different level." Daniel Bischofberger, Head of Procurement, Grossenbacher Systeme AG

Solid processes, and an eye on what's next

Four people in procurement. Three sites. Over 400 active suppliers. Supplier management at Grossenbacher ran cleanly: data pulled from SAP, prepared in Excel, the annual supplier evaluation closed off as ISO certification requires. Stable relationships, no major gaps. What changed was not the internal process. It was everything outside it.

Customers now expect complete compliance records. New regulations have to be passed down to sub-suppliers. Certificates, contracts, and qualification documents keep piling up. "What we have to provide and confirm to customers and auditors has grown sharply," says Daniel Bischofberger. "That has to be managed in a structured way, not with email and Excel."

The old approach worked, but it had a cost. The annual supplier evaluation took around a week, between internal data requests, supplier follow-ups, and manual consolidation. Onboarding ran on PDF templates sent by email, with status updates only available on request. Proactive supplier development, anything beyond reacting to a quality issue, was hard to build with these tools. "We didn't have a tool for it," says Daniel Bischofberger, "so we didn't have the capacity to go deep strategically."

The decision: co-development instead of compromise

Grossenbacher already uses Luminovo's quoting tool every day. "Our request volume has grown so much that without the tool, we couldn't handle it anymore," says Daniel Bischofberger. Sourcing and SRM had always belonged together in his mind. The decision came quickly: manage both in one place.

The market had never offered a fit. "We knew we had catching up to do, but we could never settle on a solution. We never found one that worked 100%." Co-development with Luminovo opened a different path: a tool built from day one for how electronics procurement actually works.

What stood out for Daniel Bischofberger was the speed of the partnership. "I spot an issue, write in our shared chat, and within half a day I get an answer or the fix itself. I hadn't seen that in earlier software projects." The teams have been building together since January.

"Working with Luminovo is at a level I haven't experienced before. Solution-focused, fast, moving forward." Daniel Bischofberger, Head of Procurement, Grossenbacher Systeme AG

What's changing

What customers and suppliers gain

The shift does not stop at Grossenbacher's procurement desk. Customers get more certainty. Qualifications, contracts, and compliance documents are available at any time, with no preparation needed. Anyone choosing Grossenbacher as a partner sees at a glance that the supply chain is managed.

Suppliers gain less friction. Certificates are requested automatically. Onboarding runs digitally. The manual back-and-forth by email falls away. "The systems talk to each other, and people can focus on what matters," says Daniel Bischofberger. That holds on both sides of the relationship.

More time for what actually matters

The goal is supplier management that happens continuously, not once a year. Evaluations on demand. Digital onboarding. Qualifications and contract status visible to everyone who needs them.

In the future, employees across Grossenbacher will check for themselves which suppliers are qualified for which applications, and where contracts stand. Procurement gets back the room it needs for strategic work.

"My goal is for everything that has to get done, but nobody enjoys doing, to run as automatically as possible. So buyers can focus on what actually matters: building relationships, developing suppliers, making decisions." Daniel Bischofberger, Head of Procurement, Grossenbacher Systeme AG

For Daniel Bischofberger, this is no longer a strategic question. It is a conviction: "A tool like this will stop being a differentiator soon. It will be expected. We're glad we're tackling it now."

Looking ahead: sourcing and supplier management as one system

The vision goes beyond the SRM module. Quoting and supplier management are linked. Anyone calculating a quote needs to know which suppliers are qualified for which requirements.

"You have to be able to jump straight from quoting into a supplier profile, check certificates, review qualifications," says Daniel Bischofberger. "Systems that don't talk to each other cost time nobody has."

Longer term, Grossenbacher wants to bring its ERP into the same picture, so procurement data flows from every system into one place. The foundation for that is being laid now.

"It's impressive what we've built together in a short time. I'm looking forward to where this goes." Daniel Bischofberger, Head of Procurement, Grossenbacher Systeme AG