Page 31 - MetalForming Magazine February 2023 - Metal Forming for the Automotive Industry

Automotive Outlook
Kelly Springer, CEO, Metal Flow: “As we reevaluate how we communicate, we’re taking care to link the customer side of our organization with our materials planning side, as well as shipping in some cases. We’ve seen a lot of turnover among the purchasing teams that we work with, so by linking the conversations together we’ve had good suc- cess building plans that aren’t as much of a roller coaster as we look to better-manage inventory.”
throughout the plant, comprising a lot of investment in the last 3 to 5 yr.”
That investment has included auto- mated inline inspection, Springer says, “helping to ensure that we continue to look at manufacturing through a continuous-improvement lens to ensure that we stay cost-competitive in the face of all of the challenges we’re experiencing.”
At Trans-Matic, understanding and adapting to market pricing and devel- oping accurate target costs means “ensuring that we’re accurately and competitively quoting work, which always has been critical but now takes on additional focus,” Sotok says, “ensuring that we’re developing the right process, the right tool design and the right solution for each job. This requires careful attention to determin- ing what speeds we need to run at, understanding if we need to double-, triple- or even quad-cut to get best the raw-material utilization.”
And, like Springer at Metal Flow, Sotok expresses a commitment to adding automation to the plant floor, as well as to the front office. “We’re investing in business-process automa- tion solutions,” Sotok shares, “and in technology to optimize our higher- skilled labor on the floor, including robotics and vision systems. The ‘near- shoring’ trend is real and we’re seeing a lot of new opportunities, we therefore must ensure that we remain cost-com- petitive, understand market pricing and keep a close eye on target costs— for process and tool design—as well.”
A focus on tooling development and its related costs has Trans-Matic doing a lot more with simulation than in years past, and Sotok explains that every new tooling job the firm wins runs through simulation. “This has developed in the last few years into a huge productivity enhancer,” Sotok says, “speeding our time to market. In
fact, we also recently added that capa- bility in our China facility.”
Also jumping on the automation train is Pridgeon & Clay, “When it comes to automation, your labor chal- lenges will point you in the direction you need to go,” Clay says. “We’ve had success automating some of our sim- pler processes, and it’s important to differentiate automating specific part production vs. automating a process that we can adapt to produce many different part families over time—stud insertion for example.”
Disruption = Opportunity
“Develop a Strategy to Position Your Company for Success”—that’s the title of one of the PowerPoint slides in a recent presentation from UHY, dis- cussing its 2022 Annual Automotive Supplier Outlook. Too many suppliers, the UHY team believes, are managing chaos, a situation emanating from some of the OEMs, they say—chaos begets chaos.
“We currently see many OEM deal- er-inventory levels significantly below where they should be,” Alongi says, “just a few days in some cases on high- demand models, when they should be more like 35 to 45 days. I don’t think we’ll ever get back to the bloated 80 to 90-day inventory levels, for good rea- sons. Regardless, product offerings cer- tainly will change dramatically over
the next several years, with a lot of new entries with lower volumes. The impact on the supply chain will be significant.”
How should suppliers go about developing strategies to position their companies for success, especially con- sidering the electrification movement? Begin, says UHY’s Bruce, by performing a product-portfolio assessment.
Segregate each of your products, Bruce suggests, into one of three cate- gories:
• Decline—components only uti- lized in ICE vehicles, such as engine and transmission assemblies and exhaust and fuel systems.
• Stagnant—suspension and steer- ing components, for example, and chassis and seats.
• Growth—components used in battery packs, the electric drivetrain, and sensors and other electronic com- ponents.
In some cases, Bruce stresses, criti- cal decisions must be made. “Maybe your parts or similar parts exist in another end market, say heavy truck or recreational vehicle, so you could consider trying to diversify, at least for a few years to maintain revenue and
“We are seeing what the aftermath of Covid and global supply-chain disruption means to American manufacturing. Now more than ever suppliers have opportunities to grow with new customers and market segments, thanks in part to reshoring.”
28 MetalForming/February 2023
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