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Elrae Industries Inc.
11035 Walden Avenue, Alden, NY 14004
716.681.7151 | Fax: 716.681.5216
Manufacturing Solutions that Win the Day™
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A major US supplier of printers for the ATM market in Europe was bidding on an assembly being produced at a sister plant overseas.
The US plant had been shipping its printer to the sister plant where it was then partially disassembled and parts were added to create the final product. The disassembly, plus poor quality of the added parts, caused many reliability problems with the printer.
The supplier knew that by taking on the assembly process they could improve the quality of the printer, reduce costs, and ultimately increase market share. However, they did not have the necessary internal stamping capabilities.
Their supply-line management team began the search for qualified stamping suppliers.
The team conducted a comprehensive, formal survey of many potential suppliers in the US. Out of more than two dozen candidates, Elrae was selected as the number one supplier. Elrae met their best requirements, including TQM and JIT systems already in place, and they had the experience to develop the truce customer/supplier partnership that the customer desired.
An existing stamped part was one of the customer's biggest problems and affected the reliability of the printer. The part required 100% rework before it could be used in the assembly. An inefficient manual operation to debur a notch in the part was time-consuming and, if not done properly, resulted in an unreliable part.
Elrae engineers designed new tooling and devised secondary operations to provide a superior part at 50% savings in cost. The rework operation was eliminated and the reliability of the part in the customer's assembly was no longer a problem.
Elrae engineers worked in conjunction with the customer's engineering and manufacturing staff to review the printer assembly and other associated parts. Elrae provided engineering assistance to redesign several parts and even helped eliminate a number of them by combining two components into one.
In some instances, tooling was designed with interchangeable inserts to allow production of similar parts from the same too, reducing the customer's investment in tooling. Once designs were finalized, prototypes were built and tested.
The final steps required building thirteen dies in the same number of weeks to meet the customer's production schedule. Elrae's modern facilities had all the necessary resources to quickly turn around the dies and successfully meet the challenge.
Sixteen parts were to be supplied in two different sets to be used in separate printer assemblies. The customer required JIT shipments, in re-usable containers with 80 sets of parts per pallet. The customer worked on and internal Kanban system and JIT shipment of the parts was crucial to the success of the project.
Parts were scheduled off of annual blanket orders with weekly release updates showing an eight week window for requirements. Elrae parts were certified dock to line and the parts are shipped weekly for the following week's use. No customer inventory of parts is required.
Elrae proved to be the right choice for the printer supplier's metal stamping need and continues to result in several benefits for the customer: