Challenge:
A custom business unit at a large manufacturing company needed to complete orders for any type of custom fitting within 1 week. The bottleneck was in the custom bend dies design and production for their custom bending machines. The custom business unit needed to create the design in-house, then send that design out for manufacturing quotes before production could begin. Unfortunately the process generated greater than (1) week lead times, which were too long for many of their customers.
Solution:
Alaark Tooling & Automation was contacted to find a solution to the custom business unit’s challenge. Alaark sales, production and engineering met with the customer to discuss their needs. They stressed that the lead time of these manufactured bend dies cannot exceed (1) week from quote request. Alaark worked with the customer on standardizing the bend die designs in order to meet the requested lead times. The customer and Alaark also created a standard pricing model that included cost adjustments for expedited lead times on various designs. Alaark can now complete a quote from the customer within 1 hour, speeding up the quoting process for placed orders.
Benefits:
- The bottleneck of design and manufacturing was eliminated, decreasing lead times.
- Standard pricing helps decrease quote lead time and gives a cost comparison for different expedited times.
- Standardized designs reduced lead times to manufacturing and improved the quality of the products.
