The other day we reached out to a customer we worked with many years ago. It was great to hear Andy’s voice and even better to hear “Oh, yeah, I remember you.” Lately we have been reaching out to former customers to understand their perception of ETM Manufacturing and what we could be doing better. My belief is that old, former customers are the best source of blunt, honest feedback. Andy did not disappoint. “Yeah, I think of you guys as a plain vanilla sheet metal shop and I don’t really need that.”
We couldn’t resist asking the next question: “So Andy, what is ‘plain vanilla’ to you?” As Andy’s business has grown, he has diversified his sheet metal suppliers. He uses one shop for simple parts, another shop for complex parts and yet a third shop for large parts. His recollection from 10 or 15 years ago is that ETM was better at simpler parts in short runs. That was certainly the case many years ago when we had our small shop in Wilmington.
We now operate in a 43,000 SF factory out in Littleton with 3 manufacturing cells running 2+ shifts a week. We still make many plain vanilla parts, but now we can handle prototypes up to full production – at our peak we have shipped 6 weekly truckloads of various parts to multiple customers. We still make simple brackets as well, but now we are making 300mm silicon wafer conveyor chassis as well as 50 unit PDA charging stations and carpel tunnel surgical tables. And while some of our parts can fit in a UPS overnight box, most of our assemblies – 6 ft server racks, 10 ft electrical enclosures, 12 ft drain pans – require special delivery.
Our customers require a certain level of service they have a hard time finding elsewhere. They know if their design isn’t working, we can help them fix the tolerance issues, or rigidity issues, or the lamination issues. They know they can count on us to fix a powder coat supplier located in Wisconsin that they picked. They trust us to improve their packaging and save them thousands of dollars in unnecessary freight costs. Need 1000 parts in 3 days, call ETM. Need 47 new designs in a week, call ETM. These kinds of requests are pretty normal for us – but not plain vanilla.
At ETM, we work every day to be the best all-round sheet metal supplier for customers that need this kind of service. Sometimes they have very spikey demand. Other times they have very unpredictable forecasts. Most times the design process took longer than expected, but the scheduled launch date hasn’t changed. Regardless, they need our help and we love that kind of challenge. If that means we are plain vanilla, then I guess we are, but I’d like to think we also come with fudge sauce, whipped cream, sprinkles and a cherry on top!
from ETM Manufacturing http://etmmfg.com/3690
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