Page 29 - MetalForming Magazine February 2023 - Metal Forming for the Automotive Industry

Automotive Outlook
“The company was assembling components for an OEM,” Clevenger explains, “and the assembly required right- and left-hand components. How- ever, the OEM was sending unequal volumes of right and left components. The assembler never questioned the unequal forecast from the OEM and fell weeks behind on assembly.
“Frequent reviews of the forecast,” he continues, “between the assembler and OEM would have prevented this problem.”
Suppliers Weigh In
At metal former Trans-Matic, Hol- land, MI, a supplier of components and assemblies for fuel-delivery sys- tems, engine components, sensor housings, brake systems and more, untrustworthy information on the OEM
“Suppliers must remain informed on customers’ current projects as well as understand opportunities down the road... Doing so requires suppliers to closely examine how they communicate with each customer.”
portals became a significant issue through the pandemic and after. So says executive vice president of global operations Jeff Sotok.
“Things didn’t make sense, espe- cially throughout 2021 and early 2022 with the supply-chain issues,” Sotok says. “Everyone wanted to make sure that they had parts, so we saw a lot of over-ordering. In some cases we ques- tioned it, because if we built to what was in the portal we’d be ordering more raw material than we needed, making more parts, even running overtime in some cases, all to ultimately wind up storing work in inventory. While we knew it was going to happen, we still wound up over-producing in some cases.”
Suppliers must remain informed on their customers’ current projects as well as understand opportunities down the road to manufacture other products and provide other processes and serv- ices. Doing so requires suppliers to closely examine how they communi- cate with each customer. So says the UHY team.
“Whether you’re receiving schedules electronically on a daily, weekly or biweekly basis,” says Clevenger, “if you only talk when there’s a problem you really cannot accurately conduct a sound sales-to-operations planning process. I recommend that suppliers schedule one-on-one time with cus- tomers—face to face if possible— monthly, or more often—and expand the scope of their conversations to dis- cuss in depth what’s going on in their businesses. You can learn so much from this, and this close contact can uncover information you can use to supplement what your ERP system is telling you, to help ensure more accurate produc- tion and inventory planning.”
Kelly Springer, CEO of Metal Flow, also in Holland, MI, a manufacturer of sensor components and solenoid tubes, fuel cups, airbag components
and fuel filters, among other automo- tive parts and assemblies, adds: “We often know better than do our cus- tomers what the volumes should look like, using forecasts published by IHS and others. Also, as we reevaluate how we communicate, we’re taking care to link the customer side of our organi- zation with our materials planning side, as well as shipping in some cases. We’ve seen a lot of turnover among the pur- chasing teams we work with, so by link- ing the conversations together we’ve had good success building plans that aren’t as much of a roller coaster as we look to better-manage inventory.”
Developing close personal relation- ships with customers, even as they experience turnover in key purchasing roles, rings true with Sotok, as well as with Kevin Clay, CEO of fellow Western Michigan metal former Pridgeon & Clay, a premier North American man- ufacturer of vehicle exhaust systems.
“Customer EDI varies among cus- tomers, in terms of reliability,” shares Clay, noting that Pridgeon & Clay has about 20 key customers, “and they all do it differently. But in every case we make sure that our customer-service reps have great relationships with our customers. They need to know that they’re valued by the customer and that they can turn to us and trust us as a supplier.”
And just as Springer says, “we focus a lot of energy on forecasting,” Clay adds, “Our forecasting model is solid and mature, allowing us to connect our part numbers to the specific plat- form forecasts. This puts us on a good path when we’re working to balance our raw, work-in-process and finished- goods inventories.”
Market Pricing, Cost Control Key
When it comes to understanding market pricing, “keeping a keen eye on cost control is paramount,” says Springer. “We’ve added automation
Jeff Sotok, executive vice president of global operations, Trans-Matic: “Understanding and adapting to market pricing and developing accurate target costs means ensuring that we’re accurately and competitively quoting work, ensuring that we’re developing the right process, the right tool design and the right solution for each job.”
26 MetalForming/February 2023
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