Page 48 - MetalForming-Jun-2018-issue

Reducing Parts Cost
Having the full gamut of sheetmetal-fabrication options under one roof enables one-stop metal-parts shops, such as DureX, to scale with the customer as demand increases and to facilitate the transition to hard tooling by mixing and matching metalworking techniques for multicom- ponent assemblies and incorporating hybrid and secondary tooling approaches to reduce costs.
air-conditioning business.”
That happened recently when Milazzo pursued a
project with DureX that helped him reduce the amount of warehouse space required for a volume of large, bulky products in inventory.
“Many of our sheetmetal components are basically boxes, so they take up a lot of dead air space,” explains Milazzo. “If you have hundreds of them, that means a lot of money to store them.”
Durex developed a knockdown box that could be stored flat until final finishing and assembly, allowing 50 or 60 components to be stored in the same space that normally fit about 12.
“That saves a lot of space, which in a warehouse translates into money,” says Milazzo, adding that it also provides him with a competitive edge over his much larger competitors.
Milazzo stresses the importance of having a good, collaborative relationship with metal-parts supplier such as DureX. “The cooperation that exists between our company, our engineering, our research and devel- opment and DureX’s inhouse engineers is very good,” he says. “I’ve come to depend upon the company as if they existed under my roof.” MF
Information for this article was supplied by DureX, Inc., Union, NJ; 908/688-0800, www.durexinc.com.
46 MetalForming/June 2018
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