3 Ways A Metal Manufacturer Fine-Tunes Its Services For OEMs: Part 2
June 16, 2017
Most OEMs expect their supplier to ship high-quality parts on time and help achieve the lowest manufacturing costs. Part one of this blog series discussed how the right metal manufacturer should add value beyond quality and delivery.
From speeding up quote turnaround time and product launches to leveraging lean manufacturing experience, your supplier should work to fine-tune its services and meet your most challenging demands. In the final part of this blog series, learn one more way your supplier should elevate its services to reduce costs, fulfill your requests flexibly and offer additional value.
3. Practice Proactive Product And Inventory Control
Inventory control goes beyond basic cycle counting and keeping extra parts in stock for emergencies, although these are critical practices.
Your metal manufacturer should manage inventory based on the ABCs, a categorization method focused on the volume and dollar value of your inventory.
Using this method, your supplier will decide whether each part is a stock item or non-stock item, and assign stock items an A, B or C category. Categories are dependent on the product value and determine how much of each item to keep in stock, which helps keep costs under control.
Sales and operations planning is also essential to determine what production levels are needed to meet customer demand. Your supplier may forecast for 12 months out and set a schedule for the next six months in order to make proactive personnel and labor decisions.
This technique helps your supplier manage seasonal fluctuations and plan ahead so that it doesn’t have to hire new people or admit it’s unprepared to meet your requests. This also reduces costs because your supplier doesn’t have to spend as much on overtime.
Ultimately, fine-tuning fabrication and metal finishing services for OEMs takes buy-in from a supplier’s entire company. That includes everyone from the workers on the shop floor to supervisors and salespeople. Once your supplier has the right systems in place, it can deliver much more value for your OEM.