Automotive and industrial manufacturers enter 2026 with procurement under pressure from multiple directions.
This article translates 236B USD of anonymized procurement benchmarks from the automotive and manufacturing industries from into a focused set of benchmarks and KPIs.
The goal is simple:
Benchmarks are shown across top, average, and bottom performers, split between direct and indirect spend.
Recent spend patterns show an industry moving from disruption management toward structural rebalancing.
Takeaway for 2026: Plan for a mixed environment: fewer pure crisis fire drills than 2022–2023, but continued volatility and compliance complexity that demand structural cost and risk optimization.
The median company profile provides a realistic reference point for most global manufacturers.
Across total spend, the typical automotive or manufacturing enterprise looks like this:
These numbers describe organizations with partial control and visibility, but still significant fragmentation, especially in indirect categories.
Takeaway for 2026: If your metrics are materially worse than these medians, the constraint is likely structural. Incremental savings initiatives will struggle until control improves.
The gap between leaders and laggards is structural, not incremental.
(bottom → top performers)
(bottom → top performers)
Fragmentation remains one of the clearest differentiators between performance tiers. The median enterprise still operates with high transactional volume.
Median benchmarks:
Complexity is also being pushed upward by structural shifts in supply strategy:
Nearshoring expands the supplier footprint
Regional dual sourcing adds parallel supply paths
Multi-hub operating models increase entities and transactions
Without parallel supplier rationalization and stronger master data and PO control, that growth strains traceability, risk management, and compliance workflows.
According to the Deloitte Manufacturing Outlook 2026, digital supply chain tools are increasingly used to model scenarios, evaluate trade routes, surface risk, and identify cost savings as global complexity rises.
Takeaway for 2026: Nearshoring and regional dual sourcing are necessary, but without parallel supplier rationalization, complexity will limit risk management and digital scalability.
Payment terms remain one of the most tangible financial levers for procurement.
Invoice-to-due benchmarks show:
For indirect spend, moving from the bottom to the top quartile of terms unlocks roughly 45K USD per 1M USD of spend, on average.
Examples by category:
Takeaway for 2026: Payment terms support both liquidity and resilience, giving procurement room to secure long-term supply without stressing cash flow.
Risk is becoming a core procurement KPI as geopolitical tension, logistics volatility, and material constraints persist.
Benchmark patterns associated with stronger risk posture include:
Direct top performers combine 99% PO coverage, 589K USD spend per supplier, and 61-day invoice-to-due, creating the foundation for long-term agreements.
Takeaway for 2026: Formalize risk dashboards and tier-1/tier-2 stress testing around the suppliers where spend is already concentrated and dependency is highest.
AI, real-time visibility platforms, and guided buying rely on structured, consistent data.
Median benchmarks that describe the data foundation include:
Takeaway for 2026: AI value scales where procurement structure is already simplified. Fixing data fragmentation is a prerequisite, not a side project.
Across the dataset, a small set of KPIs consistently separates top performers from the rest:
These metrics link procurement execution directly to cost control, compliance, resilience, and scalability.
A practical next step is to benchmark your own KPIs against industry peers in the State of Spend report.
Using these KPIs as a common language with finance, supply chain, and business leaders makes it easier to agree on priorities, track impact during 2026, and adjust as markets move.
The full State of Spend report provides the benchmarks and distributions needed to decide where procurement is already leading and where targeted changes can unlock the next step of value.