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The
most valuable supply chain partners are flexible because:
They
continue to invest in technology and equipment ...
They
continue to invest in their people – building expertise ... and
They
continue to foster organizational innovation.
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We
have heard from many customers
that business is picking up – rapidly.
The
uncertainty in the stock market and the larger economy belies what is happening
with our small and mid-sized OEM customers.
Like many
partners, Ace Metal Crafts Company continuously focuses on how best to meet the
changing needs of customers – whether by providing new technology, improved
processes, or simply scaling to meet the demand. Scale. Now there’s a perennial topic for
manufacturers. The traditional definition of scale emphasizes capacity,
technology, and the variety of manufacturing services.
Today the ability to scale is not necessarily
most important in
fabrication. It’s flexibility.
Sufficient
manufacturing size is important, and still dominates the supply chain. At Ace
Metal Crafts our expansive work areas, technology investments, engineering
services, and advanced capabilities help us simultaneously accommodate many
diverse projects, and complete them to specification in shorter time. Our sheer
size as a manufacturer helps us realize higher equipment utilization and return
on capital investment, and optimized resource allocation, which for our
customers can mean more cost-effective projects.
The ability to use all these resources
and tools flexibly that brings real value to supply chain partners, so
much more so than scale.
Technology, optimized processes, and how well your teams work together can make manufacturers like Ace be as flexible as
much smaller fabricators.
Flexibility in
manufacturing is not possible without a focus on culture. Manufacturers that
are flexible build into their daily business life and culture improved
information flow, enhanced decision making, and coordination and cooperation
between management and shop floor. Flexible manufacturers see labor not as a
cost or as a way to complete a function, but as human resources, so there is
emphasis on creating a multi-skilled, creative, knowledgeable, trusting and
responsible work force.
You
might say such a company is in the sweet spot of metal fabrication –
having grown in size, capacity, and sophisticated services yet retaining
the nimble, innovative characteristics of a niche player.
And that
helps Ace grow as customers grow and continue to deliver what brought these
customers to us in the first place.
