Manufacturing Today Issue - 219 December 2023 | Page 78

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“ As we produce such high volumes of product for the medical industry , we ’ ve moved geographically closer to our customers to significantly shorten our transportation routes . When we started medical production , we were shipping one delivery of medical devices across the country each week but are now shipping around eight full trucks per week .
Increasing production capabilities
“ This means we ’ ve dramatically reduced our transit time and been able to boost our customer service . To give you an idea , the transit time from California was around one week , but from our new site , we ’ ve managed to reduce it to within one day .”
However , investment into the new site is not slowing down any time soon . “ The 50,000-square-foot site sits on a 21- acre plot , so we ’ ve got plenty of room for additional expansion and we ’ re planning a major extension in 2024 ,” Chad reveals . “ In the meantime , we ’ re investing in additional production equipment on a regular basis and exploring the possibilities of automation .
“ We pride ourselves on creating and maintaining strong working relationships with customers , so our current customers expect us to continue meeting increased production requirements as their businesses continually expand . We spend a lot of time on our customers ’ production floor with their technical personnel to better understand the role we can play in improving their overall efficiencies .
We ’ ve moved geographically closer to our customers to significantly shorten our transportation routes
“ We ’ ve developed global strategy teams for each sector to explore how we can best assist our customers as most of them have global customer bases . We set up manufacturing cells for each customer so we can produce the same parts consistently across the globe . This is also a form of risk aversion for us , as it means we can ramp up production at a different site if we run into any problems or delays , which also minimizes disruption for the customer .
Customer focused
“ We ’ re currently working with several metrology suppliers to develop automated measurement techniques ,” he adds . “ We currently use lasers and camera systems on our equipment to provide us with real-time feedback on measurements . We ’ re aiming to automate our higher runs as much as possible , but we must first consider how we can automate quality checks to ensure our customers do not experience any defects .”
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