Most buyers comparing an Indian proximity switch with a Chinese import run the comparison on unit price, because that is the number on both quotations. It is also the number that tells you least about what the decision will cost you.
We manufacture in Mumbai, so we have an obvious interest here. What follows is written to be useful anyway, including the part where imported stock is the better answer.
Compare landed cost, not unit price
An imported sensor arrives carrying several costs the quotation does not show:
- Customs duty on the assessable value
- Freight, and air freight if the schedule slipped
- Clearance and handling charges
- Exchange rate movement between quotation and payment
- Working capital tied up for the weeks the goods are in transit
On a bulk order those line items regularly exceed any difference in the unit price. Before deciding, put both quotations on a landed cost basis per piece delivered to your stores. It is a ten minute exercise and it changes the answer more often than not.
Lead time is a schedule risk, not an inconvenience
Domestic supply is a production question. Import is a production question plus ocean freight plus customs clearance, and the last of those is the one nobody can give you a date for.
The cost that matters is not the delay itself. It is what the delay does to a commissioning team standing idle, or to a liquidated damages clause. If sensors are on the critical path of a plant build, that risk belongs in the comparison.
Minimum order quantities
Imported ranges are usually stocked in pack sizes that suit the exporting market. Needing forty of an M18 8 mm and being quoted a box of a hundred is common, and the surplus sits in your stores for years. Domestic production is scheduled against the order, so the quantity is the quantity.
Where documentation decides it
If you are building machinery for export, or supplying into pharmaceutical, food or automotive quality systems, your own compliance depends on component documentation. Declarations of conformity, material declarations, and traceability to a production batch.
This is routinely where imported low-cost stock falls down, not because the product is bad but because the paperwork chain is thin and nobody can produce a document for a part bought eighteen months ago. Establish what your quality system requires and ask for it before the order. See our note on documentation for export machinery.
Support, warranty and year three
When a sensor fails inside warranty, the practical questions are who replaces it and how quickly. A domestic manufacturer is a phone call in your own time zone. An import channel is an email, a time difference, and a return shipment that may cost more than the sensor.
The longer question is availability. A plant has a twenty year life and catalogues do not. A part made in Mumbai is subject to our production decisions, which we can tell you about. A part from an overseas range can be rationalised away without notice, and the first you hear of it is when you reorder.
Where imported genuinely wins
An honest comparison needs this section.
Genuinely specialist product that is not made domestically. High precision absolute position measurement is the clearest case. This is exactly why we distribute Novotechnik of Germany and Contelec of Switzerland alongside our own manufacturing rather than pretending an inductive switch can do a linear transducer job.
Very high volume commodity requirements where the specification is simple, the application is undemanding, support is not needed and you have the working capital to carry the inventory.
An existing design committed to a specific imported part where requalifying is more expensive than continuing to import.
The useful question is not Indian or imported. It is whether your supplier will tell you which one your application actually needs.
How to run the comparison properly
- Put both quotations on a landed cost per piece basis.
- Add the schedule risk if the sensors are on a critical path.
- Check the minimum order quantity per variant, not per order.
- Ask both suppliers what documentation ships with the goods, and when.
- Ask both what happens if it fails in month fourteen.
- Ask both whether the part will still exist in five years.
We manufacture inductive, capacitive, photoelectric, magnetic and NAMUR proximity switches in Mumbai to IEC 60947-5-2 and have done since 1985. Send us the specification you are comparing and we will quote against it, and tell you honestly if what you are being offered elsewhere is the better buy.
Need a price, a drawing or a stock check?
Send us the part number, or just describe the application and the target you need to sense. We will come back with the right model, a dimensional drawing and a quotation. Accent Controls has built proximity switches in Mumbai since 1985 to IEC 60947-5-2.
Request a quotation · +91 98673 64004 · info@accentsensors.com