“The Customer” is an OEM market leader of packaging machinery. Each machine contains thousands of parts of both standard and custom designed components. With the ever increasing cost of material and parts, “The Customer” was looking for an overall cost down solution for their machinery.
Phase ICost Saving
Customer Challenge
Find a stable and sustainable source of machine parts that offers us considerable cost savings on our current build, without disrupting any of our processes, whilst ensuring retrofitting parts in existing machinery in the market.
Our Approach
The "Low Hanging Fruit" Approach
Due to the complexity and customization of the machines, we identified a “low hanging fruit” approach to quickly achieve cost savings without sacrificing too much time. we established supplier relocation to low cost manufacturers for the items in each of the groups below.
Standard Products
Standard products bought through distributors, such as bearings, chains, sprockets and power supplies.
Custom Parts
Custom build parts without tooling or molding requirements, together with parts that require high labor involvement.
High Volume Parts
High volume and high value parts that require tooling / mold / fixtures.
Our Expertize
Engineering
Material Synchronization from Imperial to Metric and Back
Material thickness varies from country to country with different tolerance standards. Especially when it comes to the U.S. imperial system to the metric system utilized by the rest of the world. Our engineers worked closely with “the customer” to ensure continuity and retrofit.
Sourcing
Dual-Source Strategy
We establish a dual-source from the beginning until full process control was established and inventory management matured. For IP sensitive parts, we maintained the dual-source approach.
Supply Chain
Process Control and Inventory Management
From the start of the sourcing process to in-production process control and final quality inspection, we were involved in every step of the way to ensure 100% quality delivery. Due to the longer lead time with offshore purchasing, different variations of forecasting had to be established to ensure we never shut the line down!
Results
Phase 2Improve Development Lead Time
Customer Challenge
Optimize product design efficiency to reduce development lead time and further maximize cost savings.
Our Approach
Early stage engagement & Co-Engineering
Analyze
Material properties and functional analysis.
Identify
Identify high-cost features.
Suggest
Base on Form Fit and Function, suggest alternate production processes.
Compare
Compare cost-effectiveness.
Our Expertize
Co- Engineering
Early stage cooperation
Our engineering team worked together with the customer’s design team at an early stage. We helped to optimize the design by suggesting production processes, standard tolerances, material, and manufacturability. We optimized the product design phase and greatly improved the time to market by connecting manufacturing and design engineering from the get-go.
Specialized Sourcing
Special materials and processes
We have experience in developing sources for highly specific alloys or material compositions to support the required functionality.
Special processes we covered in this case: Metal Injection Molding, metal to plastic part conversion, multi-spindle CNC machines.
Results
Phase 3Localization Support
Customer Challenge
Set up sales channels in China without huge upfront investment and uncertaintly.
Our Approach
Solution - Embedded Rep Office
Together with our customer we came up with a model where we created an independent and dedicated unit, that was nested in our China organization. This offered a low risk market entry for our customer and only required a small investment. This way we established the following services.
Legal
Human Resources services – Recruiting, training and supporting customer sales team.
HR
Human Resources services – Recruiting, training and supporting customer sales team.
Research
Human Resources services – Recruiting, training and supporting customer sales team.
Events
Human Resources services – Recruiting, training and supporting customer sales team.
Our Expertize
Human Resources
Process Control and Inventory Management
We supported the customer with our many years of experience finding and hiring professional staff in China and building effective and communicative teams.
Legal
Local Legal Knowledge and Experience
We supported our customer with all legal requirements from IP protection to legal liability and options for business registration.
Sales / Marketing
Local Market Knowledge and Network
We executed an initial market research establishing key markets and the most effective channels to develop new business.
Results
We build a team of 9 local staff and technical support within 5 months
- Successfully set up local country corporation.
