Page 36 - MetalForming January 2017

Fiber-Laser Cutting to the Rescue
of the total volume,” Bozell says. “This customer reasoned that the job would be successful and that part volumes would increase, but still was hesitant on the initial volume. So we added an intermediate step with the laser-cut blank and then processed it through the forming operations in lower vol- umes. When the volumes reach a cer- tain level we can build hard tooling. Having the laser cutter at our disposal helped launch that job appropriately and earned us a job that we may not have gotten otherwise.”
To outsource this type of work would have been costly, with lead time becoming a significant issue.
“As soon as that laser-cutting machine came on, we used lead time as an advantage,” Bozell says. “And it allows us to better serve our customers. For example, during product develop- ment, we can meet with customers and produce a prototype to use as we share our ideas. The ability to produce parts quickly is a huge advantage.”
Weber Specialties added storage racks to handle sheet for the hun- gry laser cutter, and is looking at ways to add sheet remnants to its inventory-management system to better serve low-volume cus- tomers that may not require full sheets for limited part production.
Inventory Challenge Offers an Opportunity
Interestingly, addition of the fiber-laser cutting machine has created an unexpected challenge, one that Bozell sees as an oppor- tunity for Weber Specialties.
“We are trying to manage
sheet remnants,” he says. “We
can offer remnants to low-vol-
ume customers so that they don’t
have to purchase full sheets to
make only four or five parts. We
are working on a strategy to keep rem- nants in stock and in our MRP/ERP system so that we can identify exactly
what we have. We hadn’t even consid- ered this when we purchased the machine.” MF
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34 MetalForming/January 2017
www.metalformingmagazine.com
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