Value-added manufacturing for industrial rubber products combines the benefits of custom fabrication with the advantages of parts marking, kitting, and custom packaging. When you outsource fabrication to Elasto Proxy, you can reduce your labor and material costs while improving part quality and consistency. By combining custom fabrication with our added-value services, you can make your products even less expensive to buy, receive, stock, pick and install. Here’s how.
Parts Marking
Elasto Proxy offers parts marking with inkjet printing and UV drying for letters and numbers that are easier-to-read for fewer picking errors. Clearly marked parts can also reduce labor costs because employees won’t need to compare unknown parts to engineering drawings. Marking isn’t limited to part numbers, however. Inkjet printing and UV drying supports the inclusion of production information like the manufacturing date.
Parts marking also supports traceability, an important consideration in industries like medical and healthcare, military and defense, and aerospace and aviation. Part numbers that look crisp and clean promote perceptions of product quality, too. Plus, Elasto Proxy’s marked parts won’t de-laminate like labels or rub-off like markers, which can be messy and difficult-to-read.
Kitting and Custom Packaging
Kitting and custom packaging from Elasto Proxy also simplify ordering and receiving. These value-added services reduce freight costs, speed picking, and optimize assembly times, too. Consider the following example. An original equipment manufacturer (OEM) of mobile equipment needs 15 different parts – and could receive as many as 15 different shipments. That’s a lot of shipments to pay for and plenty of paperwork to process.
If each of these 15 parts arrives separately, stockers could make as many as 15 different trips from the receiving area to the storage racks. Then, when it’s time for assembly, pickers need to pull the parts and move them to Production. There’s wasted time spent wandering the warehouse. Then, if the wrong part gets picked, it’s back to the racks.
There are other risks and costs, too. If 15 different parts come from 15 different suppliers, the failure of any one supplier could leave the OEM with quantities of 14 parts that won’t complete an assembly. For Purchasing, there are 15 different SKUs to order and 15 different vendors to track. For Accounting, there are as many as 15 different invoices. Working with a single vendor, SKU, shipment, and invoice is easier.
The Elasto Proxy Solution
To reduce costs and increase efficiency, the OEM in our example can order custom-packaged kits with marked parts from Elasto Proxy. Each kit arrives in its own box and contains all of the rubber parts for a complete mobile equipment assembly. Because the boxes are shrink-wrapped together and arrive on a freight pallet, there are fewer shipments to pay for. Instead of stocking 15 separate parts, personnel just put individual boxes on a shelf.
Then, when it’s time for assembly, there’s no hunting for the right parts to pick since they’re already in the same box. Plus, the marked parts are arranged in order of assembly. In other words, the top-most part is the one that’s installed first. The bottom-most part is installed last. This lets the assembler start with the mobile equipment’s ceiling, work down the walls, and install the flooring last.
Find Value-Added Manufacturing for Industrial Rubber Products
Would you like to learn more about value-added manufacturing for industrial rubber products such as seals, gaskets and insulation? Maybe you’d like to learn more about our custom fabrication capabilities or the benefits of vendor consolidation instead. Elasto Proxy has all of the added-value services that you need and 30 years of experience prove it.
To learn more, contact us.
