Bringing Work in House Makes Shops More Independent

As we celebrate our country’s independence this Fourth of July, I decided to take a look at some shops that are creating a bit of their own independence by taking on certain tasks in house that they used to send out. It’s often a great way to increase efficiency and save money in the long run.

Here’s an automotive stamping facility that produces 95 percent of its stamping die sets in house using high-end EDM units. The company also produces millions of heavy flanges for a car’s exhaust system each year. A specific feature for these flanges used to be sent out to a vendor for work on a CNC lathe, but now can be produced in house on the company’s inverted vertical turning center.

This manufacturer uses its EDM unit to make and sharpen form tools for its production equipment. Strategically, learning new skills in house may lead to future commercialization of a value-added process not previously available. It could be a model for other shops.

This traditional Ohio-based screw machine shop combined its own in-house engineering talent and creativity with the expertise of a system integrator to create a sophisticated production cell to go along with its other automation forays.

Up against a tight deadline and down to a single insert to run an entire batch of hardened steel components, this shop turned to its tooling supplier to help overcome a tough threading operation and take an expensive outsourced job in house for a fraction of the cost.

Happy Fourth of July!