MOD-01 · Supplier terms

Qualified supplier terms

Draft for comment

What a supplier would give Moduloa and get back, on lead time, quality, price and cash. The idea underneath is simple: every payment Moduloa makes is covered by a payment a customer has already made, and Moduloa owns no stock. Published as draft v0.2 on 2026-10-13, before any supplier has qualified, so suppliers can correct it before anything is frozen. Nothing here is in force.

Built by PYX, one of five projects on the task board. The customer side of the same money is in the commercial terms.

The rules

Five rules the rest follows from

1 · No purchase order without cash coverNothing that cannot be returned is ordered until the customer has paid for it. This is T-02, payments release work, applied to parts.

2 · Moduloa never owns stockCommon parts belong to the supplier until a hub uses them. Parts made for one customer belong to that customer once paid for. There is no third pile.

3 · Suppliers are paid fast, from money receivedPublished payment days for each tier, counted from a published acceptance window. The customer's earlier payment funds the speed, not Moduloa.

4 · Risk sits with whoever caused it, and is shownChange windows, an excess clock and a quarterly statement of what each customer is liable for, so nobody is surprised by what they owe.

5 · Credit only on someone else's balance sheetA customer who needs 30 or 60 days gets them from an insured or non-recourse provider, and the cost appears as a line in the landed cost. A unit with no margin (T-08) has nothing to absorb a default.

The parts

Who holds which parts

Pool partsCommon, multi-sourced, returnable parts on a published pool list. Stocked at the hub by the qualified supplier or a franchised distributor on consignment, and paid for when the hub takes them. The customer pays no deposit for them.

Customer-specific partsCustom mechanics, single-source, non-cancellable and long-lead parts, and minimum-order excess. Paid in full by the customer before the purchase order goes out, by default straight to the supplier against Moduloa's order.

Buffers and last-time buysSafety stock beyond the pool and end-of-life purchases. Prepaid and owned by the customer, held under a carrying charge.

A design built mostly from pool parts needs a smaller deposit, which rewards designs that use the shared list and makes the pool deeper for the next customer. A part counts as excess only if it has no demand within 90 days and cannot move to another customer. Excess held six months is charged against the deposit as obsolete.

The tiers

What a supplier gives, and what it gets

One published scorecard, the same for every supplier. Figures are proposals.

Tier	Entry	The supplier gives	Paid within	The supplier gets
Registered	Profile, capabilities, code of conduct, financial check	Quoted lead time per part family; an open-book quote	Not yet ordered from	The pooled demand forecast, anonymised
Qualified	ISO 9001 (2015 or 2026 edition) or a Moduloa audit for small shops; first-article inspection; first 10 orders watched	On-time delivery per order line, in full, at the hub dock; containment in 24 hours and root cause in 10 working days	30 days from acceptance	Pooled requests in its scope
Preferred	12 months qualified, score above threshold	At least 95% on time and 99% of lines conforming over 12 months; a committed lead time and upside band	15 days from acceptance	First allocation of pooled volume; lighter incoming inspection
Anchor	Preferred, and willing to reserve capacity	Reserved capacity with a frozen window written into the contract	7 days from acceptance; long-lead material paid up front from the customer's deposit	A minimum volume, a multi-year term, first call on new programs
Watch	Below threshold two quarters running	A corrective plan	As the tier below	No new scope until recovered

Acceptance is 10 working days after the hub receives the goods, then the payment clock starts. Large US buyers take 59 days to pay on average and large European buyers 72.6 (Hackett Group, 2025). The word "certified" stays with hubs: suppliers are qualified.

Late deliveryA published remedy in the form Nordic suppliers already know: 0.5% of the price per commenced week, capped at 7.5%, as in Orgalim S 2012, unless NL 17 fits better. Delays caused by customer changes or by material Moduloa supplied do not count.

PriceMaterial lines tied to a named index with a stated lag, conversion fixed for the quote term, and an annual open-book review. Productivity is shown, not demanded as a fixed yearly cut.

FeesNone. No supplier pays Moduloa to be listed, scored or paid. A purchasing fee taken from suppliers would be a hidden margin inside the landed cost.

Cash risk, both waysThe scorecard weighs a supplier's lead time and minimum-order burden, and watches the other direction too: financial health at entry and yearly, Moduloa's share of each supplier's revenue, and a second source for every single point of failure.

The money

How a customer's payment reaches the supplier

The customer pays the capacity subscription a year ahead. Before any order goes out, it pays for everything that cannot be returned. Tooling is paid half at order and half at first-article approval. The balance is due when the batch is built and tested, before it ships. An illustrative order of 500 units, at EUR 195 a unit landed and a EUR 4,000 test fixture, with a Preferred supplier:

Illustrative figures, EUR, VAT left out

Day	What happens	Customer pays	Paid out	Held for the order
0	Customer-specific parts paid (500 × 120) and half the fixture; orders placed	62,000	2,000	60,000
35	Customer-specific parts reach the hub; acceptance starts			60,000
40	Fixture approved; second half paid through	2,000	2,000	60,000
50	Batch built and tested; balance paid: pool parts, assembly, freight and duty	37,500		97,500
52	Shipment leaves; freight and duty paid		5,000	92,500
64	Customer-specific suppliers paid, 15 days after acceptance		60,000	32,500
65	Pool supplier and hub paid		32,500	0

The balance held for the order never goes below zero, so Moduloa finances nothing. The supplier of customer-specific parts is paid 29 days after delivery, from money that already exists.

Pooled volume

What many customers together are worth to a supplier

One forecastA rolling forecast built from every customer, anonymised, shared with the suppliers in each scope. Framework agreements set price and lead time for the pooled volume, and a purchase order follows only a paid order, so a volume promise never becomes an unfunded debt.

Fair shares in a shortageScarce parts go by subscription tier and each customer's forecast accuracy, never by order size, which removes the reason to inflate orders.

The recordEach supplier's measured lead times and conformance go into the shared production record. Knowledge that today sits scattered across many small shops becomes one record every quote and route can read.

What stays privateThe formula and the tier rules are public. One supplier's quote, one customer's volume and one supplier's score are not, which is what both competition law and trade secret law ask for.

The honest limits

What is not settled

No supplier has qualified, Moduloa AS is not yet registered, and no qualification standard is in force. Every figure on this page is a proposal. The structure is being checked with a lawyer and an accountant before any of it becomes a numbered commitment beside T-01 to T-08: who is the seller of record, where a customer's deposit sits, and how VAT falls on deposits and exports. The late-delivery remedy waits on a reading of NL 17. No public benchmark exists for upside flexibility bands, because every filed contract found redacts them, so that number is ours to set and yours to challenge.

If you run a machine shop, an electronics line or a distribution business, the useful corrections are the ones only you can make: whether these payment days would change your price, which change windows you could live with, and what would make the pool list worth stocking. Send a correction.

Research

The work went to the integrators. The money went to the factories. · 12 October 2026
Someone has to own the hall · 12 October 2026
The measurement layer arrived, and it points at the robot · 12 September 2026

Every note is in the Journal.

Draft for comment · v0.2, 2026-10-13 · Not in force · Held to account like everything else →