Sourcing Liquid Crystal Displays: Automotive Industry Case Study

Customer A wanted to source LCDs for the automotive industry. They had tried to source them alone, but their customized requirements and low MOQ made it impossible to find a suitable supplier.

During an initial consultation, Lone Star explained multiple sourcing methods for LCDs. The one-off costs to develop new displays are high, and it’s only worthwhile if a company wants to purchase bulk quantities. This was difficult, as Customer A only wanted a test order of 1K displays. With such a low order quantity, it was no surprise they were struggling to find a supplier.

Luckily, Lone Star is the industry expert for locating difficult-to-find LCDs at lower MOQs. We have contacts in the LCD industry and conduct thorough due diligence for everything we source. For quantities between 1 – 10K, we recommend modifying designs and using a display closer to what you want. It is easier to use LCDs in production now, but there are other options too.

When products reach end of life, LCDs are taken out and either discarded or sold separately at discounted prices. We prefer the latter. Even with some customization, the prices for these end-of-life displays can be very competitive.

So, when it comes to sourcing LCDs, there are three options:

• You have an order quantity large enough to win over suppliers
• You find materials that are close to your design and customize them
• You source something that is or was in production.

Back to Customer A. We managed to find 1K parts of an end-of-life product that were purchased and put back onto the spot market. We agreed to purchase them only if we could test each part with our specialist test jig. We contacted a partner that could build the end product using high-quality parts resulting in the displays shown below. Customer A was happy, and so were we.