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The Power of Partnership
December 31, 1969 |Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
How One CEM Met the Multi-vendor Challenge Head-on
By Jason Shastri and Neil MacRaild
educe the number of touch points in the supply chain. Add efficiency and cost savings to the entire manufacturing process. Maintain profitability and steady growth. Do these sound like the directives that all EMS companies have been given? VM Services, Inc., a contract manufacturer, viewed these demands not as challenges, but as opportunities. They decided to turn to a trusted supply partner for a solution. As a global EMS company with customers relying on its quick-turn capabilities, VM Services needed a partner that could provide them with the efficiency they needed.
Too Many Vendors, Too Much Time
The nature of its high-mix, low-volume NPI businesses demands that contract manufacturer remain nimble - able to respond to customers with faster turnaround in terms of tooling fabrication and production set-up. With the number of vendors Venture was using for its pre-placement needs, quick response and product delivery became a challenge. Dealing with multiple vendors not only affected efficient product delivery, but also was time-consuming and costly.
Why are so many touch points a problem, especially when it comes to quick and reliable tooling fabrication, pallet and stencil manufacturing? Consider this: An electronics manufacturer has one product that needs to be produced. It sends data to one vendor for stencil manufacture, data to one vendor for pallet production and more file data to another vendor for tooling fabrication. It is highly likely that none of these vendors are communicating with each other or collaborating to ensure that all of these pieces work in concert with each other. With so many variables, it is nearly impossible to ensure that product delivery will be reliable and timely, communication is optimized and efficient, and cost-effective production is achieved. Because of these challenges, VM Services decided to work with DEK, a supplier with worldwide stencil, tooling and consumables logistics and manufacturing capabilities.
Figure 1 and Figure 2. Dedicated custom tooling and stencils can be made from the same file.
With DEK’s manufacturing capabilities, VM Services can send product data to one point of contact and have accurate and reliable tooling, pallets and stencils created from the same file (Figures 1 and 2). While this seems simple, in reality it is not the way that many companies operate. Manufacturers might source tooling from one vendor and source stencils from another. This, however, puts more hands in the process, increasing the time and chance for error. This multiple-vendor approach also affects delivery lead time, resource usage and cost. Consolidating these activities into one source has had an impact on VM Services’ manufacturing process.
True Partnership
It’s not just about being a “supplier” and helping get products to market more quickly. It’s about creating solutions to manufacturing challenges. VM Services views DEK as a strategic partner, helping improve processes. As the EMS, original device manufacturer (ODM) and e-fulfillment services (EFS) markets become more competitive, and as OEM research and development resources are stretched further, more manufacturers are turning to vendor partners for technology expertise and process solutions (Figure 3).
Figure 3. Jason Shastri and Thao Pham of VM Services evaluate their pre-placement process.
This is not a one-way street, however. VM Services also helped DEK evaluate its internal processes and improve them in terms of data transfer and manufacturing efficiency.
Staying on Course
Fortune 500 companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Agilent Technologies, IBM and Motorola have chosen Venture Corporation as a manufacturing partner. Continuing to attract such customers drives Venture’s quest for advanced processes. Incorporating DEK’s fixture and tooling products reduced cycle times and manual processes while improving product quality.
Jason Shastri, senior engineer, VM Services, may be contacted at jshastri@venturemfg-usa.com. Neil MacRaild, general manager, DEK Process Support Products (Americas), may be contacted at nmacraild@dek.com.