For manufacturers who require a continuous flow of custom roll forming, late shipments and stock outages can negatively impact sales and make it difficult to compete in today’s global marketplace. To limit the possibility of such headaches, OEM often choose between multisourcing vs. single-source manufacturing of their components.
It's an age-old argument in just about every industry, and there are a million articles debating the topic. This one will take you through the best way to source components through roll forming suppliers.
It's true: Employing multiple sources lowers the risk of delivery failures as a result of disruptions at individual suppliers. And putting all your roll formed parts eggs in the hands of a single manufacturer that ends up being terrible can backfire badly.
But let's be optimistic! Choosing the right roll form service is a huge supply chain help in two ways: logistics and inventory.
As you increase the number of suppliers involved in your project, you create a complex chain of communication. The more cooks in the kitchen, the more inflated the risk for mistakes is.
This can cause significant stress on your procurement and logistics teams.
Subscribing to a single-source model of roll forming production:
On the other hand, these benefits can be offset by long delivery times, large finished goods inventories, and reduced supplier reliability.
In an ideal world, suppliers would construct a simple line of communication and maintain a constant stream of roll formed components; allowing manufacturers to function with low costs and little stress. Believe it or not, there are metal forming companies like that!
Don't enter an OEM-supplier roll forming relationship without a solid vendor-managed inventory program.
A vendor-led replenishment system helps prevent unnecessary deliveries and an overcrowded manufacturing space for both OEM and vendor. Your partner should ask you for weekly counts of unopened bundles, and replenish your stock to pre-agreed levels.
In the long run, your vendor should watch the raw materials market and keep you informed. Quarterly reviews of the supply system will make sure your inventory levels are on track.
In short, roll forming can indeed provide customers high-volume orders that require replenishment that's:
A proven and reliable supply system can even take on lower-volume orders than what's commonly seen in the roll forming process. For reference, Dahlstrom consistently achieves an on-time delivery rate of 99.5% or higher and a field quality defect PPM of less than 4,000.
Because of the need for strict supply chain management in many of the industries that use roll forming services -- such as solar components -- single-source is a blessing -- as long as you find the right partner for a successful long-term relationship.
To learn how full-service roll form manufacturing can help expand your market and lower your logistics costs, give us a call at (716) 664-2555 or email us at info@dahlstromrollform.com. If you'd rather read more, check out the free e-book below. It gives awesome insight into what you should expect in terms of costs so you can fully leverage the advantages of roll forming:
(Editor's note: This article was originally published in January 2016 and was recently updated.)