To parody the holiday song … I know the weather outside isn’t frightful, but the orders we’re getting are delightful. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go …
Seriously though, we are so thankful to have great customers with large orders. Not only can we give the gift of overtime to our employees, we also get to give the gifts of finished parts back to our customer in time make their end of year shipments. Many customers have end of year deadlines, so you are not alone competing for the same capacity with your best sheet metal manufacturers. Here are some tips to help you get to the front of the line:
#1 – Place similar parts with your same sheet metal supplier.
If time is of the essence, programming might be a bottleneck. The same part – or one similar – will go through engineering faster and on to the floor ahead of the new parts.
#2 – Place same thickness and/or bend radii with the same sheet metal supplier.
Parts of the same thickness material can be nested on the same sheet. All your parts can start moving through the shop faster. Without this, there can be up to a 24 hour delay waiting the sheet stock to be cut into smaller blank sizes.
#3 – Provide clean CAD to your sheet metal supplier
Some customers with urgent jobs this month hit huge speedbumps. One customer wanted to change dimensions on their cabinet. Another is changing thickness on their brackets. Both won’t ship before Thanksgiving.
#4 – Prioritize your parts
When you are competing with everyone else, either you can decide the build order, or your sheet metal supplier. Sometimes a design delay on one customer opens up capacity for another customer. We typically pick the part that fits the capacity slot. If you provide the priorities, that open slot will get filled with your first priority. If you only need the first 20 of the 100 piece order, we might run that. At least we run what you want.
#5 – If you need quick turn capacity, don’t play around with price
Sheet metal shops make their money is busy times and lose it in slow times. If you need something now and still need a lower price, most shops will pass so they can run their more profitable jobs. Don’t have a lot of money? Let your sheet metal supplier know how important your part is to your combined future.
#6 – Expediting money always helps, but might not be applied to your job
In some cases, when I customer is willing to pay expedite fees, we might run the job on day shift in case more folks need to troubleshoot. Your expedite fee actually goes to pay the overtime on the job we pushed out in our schedule.
Regardless of your situation, a little understanding can go a long way. Most sheet metal shops have been seen orders reducing in the second half of 2015. Of course we want to help you and every other customer. Usually the more flexible customers get their orders sooner and the “all or nothing” customers need to wait until we open up enough capacity.
Lastly, as I tell our customer service team, if it is complicated, then call. A phone call can resolve these issues much faster than several emails. Talk to you soon!
from ETM Manufacturing http://etmmfg.com/3565
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