Page 27 - MetalForming November 2011

Determine if Outsourcing is Right for Your Company
...by considering these areas of concern:
• Develop confidentiality agreements, if
necessary.
• Ensure there are no legal issues or
conflicting customers.
• Understand the logistics of the
start-up.
• Have a clear understanding of the
financial arrangement.
• Ensure cooperation between each
company’s engineering teams.
• The outsourcing company always
assumes responsibility for quality and
timely delivery.
• Take care to not hurt each other’s
reputation in the market place.
• Without confidence and trust between each company, outsourcing won’t work.
to ATD for further processing within the ATD welding department.
“Stamco’s flexibility and input helped us engineer a way to produce these parts to the advantage of both compa- nies,” says Dombroski. And, according to Dombroski, outsourcing the work to Stamco allows ATD to maintain a level of open capacity to accommodate addi- tional orders as they come in, and keep the new-business pipeline filled.
Enhanced Capability– ODM Tool & Manufacturing
ODM Tool & Manufacturing, McCook, IL, a medium- to heavy-gauge metal-stamping and assembly manu- facturer located near Chicago, recently was contracted to design and build tool- ing to stamp pickup-truck transmission mounts for a Tier 1 rubber-molding company. Finished parts route to a major automotive OEM. During the stamping process, a large portion of each mount is coined to reduce the thickness of the steel to accommodate the rubber mold- ing. The pressure needed to coin the parts exceeded the 1500-ton capacity of ODM’s largest press.
Facing a quickly approaching and demanding deadline, ODM president Charles Michaelsen III called Sopko, based on their relationship forged through several years of membership in the Precision Metalforming Association. When they met to discuss the outsourc- ing project, Michaelsen and Sopko quickly agreed to terms that benefited both companies.
ODM shipped the die for the project to Stamco for its engineering team to review, and ensure that
the die would operate
properly in Stamco’s
3000-ton press. In 17
days, Stamco was able
to adjust its production
schedule to set up the die,
obtain all necessary materials
and steel, and work with
ODM engineers on trial
runs for PPAP. A final try-
out at Stamco, attended
by ODM personnel and representatives from the
Tier 1 customer, proved successful and the part entered production to meet the OEM’s deadlines.
An Alliance for Growth
and Cost Savings–Enterprise Welding & Fabricating
Enterprise Welding & Fabricating, located in the Cleveland, OH suburb of Mentor, specializes in laser cutting, CNC press-brake forming, welding, fabricating and painting. A long-time supplier of large suspension assem- blies for a major semi-trailer suspen- sion manufacturer, Enterprise recent- ly was awarded a significant increase in orders. When orders for suspension assemblies were modest and volumes relatively low, the firm’s processes proved efficient and economical. How- ever, the sudden increase in orders and volumes required its engineers to reevaluate production processes.
Working with the OEM cus- tomer, the Enterprise man-
Stamco stamps this part for ODM Tool & Manufac-
turing, a pickup-truck transmission mount of 5.2- mm-thick high-strength low-
alloy steel. A large portion of each mount is coined to reduce thickness
of the steel to accommodate rubber molding around the part, to provide
vibration dampening. The pressure need- ed to coin the parts exceeded the 1500- ton capacity of ODM’s largest press.
agement team decided that hard tooling and stamping the suspension-assembly components, rather than continuing with laser cutting and press-brake forming, was the way to go. Already familiar with Stamco’s capabilities through previous work, the OEM suggested a partner- ship between Enterprise and Stamco.
“Enterprise has the welding and assembly expertise and Stamco has the stamping equipment and the knowhow to produce large, complex high-vol- ume stampings,” says Enterprise gen- eral manager Chris Weinkamer.
To convert the laser-cut and press- brake-formed parts over to stamping, teams from Stamco and Enterprise worked to accommodate the idiosyn- crasies of stamping. For example, the laser-cut parts had 45-deg. corners and the stampings had rounded corners. That meant taking a design well-suited for laser cutting and making it work as a stamping.
Nine large progressive dies were built at a cost of $750,000, which the OEM covered. For this tooling invest- ment, the OEM realized an annual sav- ings of $1 million. And, because of the increased volumes, the OEM also agreed to purchase mill-quantities of steel, which further reduced its costs. In the end, stamped parts were shipped to Enter- prise for welding, assembly and finishing.
Benefits of this alliance were three- fold:
• Lowering its manufacturing costs enabled Enterprise to remain compet- itive and keep the work in the United States.
• Stamco increased the volume of work it was doing for the OEM, and increased its stamping capacity.
• The OEM will save millions of dol- lars during the life of the alliance.
Outsourcing Creates New Opportunities
These alliances illustrate the benefits of stampers outsourcing to increase capacity, expand capabilities and spur growth without significant investments for new equipment or plant space—some of the many strategic, operational and financial advantages of outsourcing.MF
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