The Benefits of Prioritizing Your Supply Chain Relationships

In light of the recent tariff announcements on steel and aluminum, we think it’s vitally important to focus on supplier relationships and managing your materials resources with foresight.

The Benefits of Prioritizing Your Supply Chain Relationships

Is your industry facing changes and challenges? The strength of your relationships will help you pull through successfully. A strong and reliable machining-fabrication supply chain is dependent on the supplier being able to manage multiple phases and elements of your project such as:

  • Assessment – Review and understand customer requirements and goals, and current resources.

  • Planning and Strategy – Ensure the design meets your requirements and is workable throughout the entire manufacturing process.

  • Implementation – Efficiently manage production, quality control and change management, and delivery of product deliverables.

Supplier improvement and optimization is a process we’ve been working on for decades which has been paying off in many ways including materials reliability and speed of finished goods to market. Please click to the full article on Forging Strong Supply Chain Partnerships


Learning What’s Important from Manufacturing Engineers

This past February 21st, our company had the pleasure of hosting a smart and inquisitive group of engineers from the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME), Southern New Hampshire Chapter No. 327 for a plant tour. We learned some valuable insights from these men and women, and wow, did they ask some good questions!Learning what’s important to the engineering community, not only technologically, but also from a service and support perspective, is highly valued and appreciated by the GMFCo team.

We were pleased to receive a follow-up from SME indicating that members who attended the tour were impressed and took away an additional understanding of precision manufacturing technologies and processes. Rick Atkinson, Secretary of the local SME chapter noted, “…we are certain your ability to manufacture such a wide variety of products, and with such precision and attention to detail, will continue to provide you with much growth and success.”  Likewise, we thank Rick and the entire group from SME – Southern NH for visiting our plant and engaging us in some great discussions.

Jack Gilchrist

 

UNH Feature Stairs

What do you need to know?

Our goal is to bring informative and helpful ideas about metal work to our customers and the metal fabricating industries. Feel free to contact us and share your ideas.

(603) 889-2600

[email protected]

Forging Strong Supply Chain Partnerships

“Look for 3 things in a person. Intelligence, Energy, & Integrity.
If they don’t have the last one, don’t even bother with the first two.” 
-Warren Buffet

In the good times as well as difficult times, business partners reveal whether they have the loyalty and mettle to stay with you in helping you achieve your business objectives. As with any business, we have experienced downturns in the economy and shortages of resources, but as your partner we strive to continue to deliver unparalleled processes and services.

We understand the importance of having and using our “intelligence” in the form of experience and training, and our “energy” fueled by financial planning and industry-know-how to manage project workflows for our customers. This is not only for each project but also for the continuum of projects that may arise each successive year as our customers continue to require our services.

Quality Materials from Chosen Resources

A strong and reliable machining and fabrication supply chain is dependent on the supplier being able to manage multiple phases and elements of your project:

  • Assessment – Review and understand customer requirements and goals, and current resources
  • Planning and Strategy – Ensure the design meets your requirements and is workable throughout the entire manufacturing process
  • Implementation – Efficiently manage production, quality control and change management, and delivery of product deliverables.

Integral Relationships Bring Reliable Deliveries

Managing a project from start to finish efficiently is certainly important, but there is more to building a strong relationship with a supplier whom you can depend on through good and difficult times.

The ideal supplier strives for on-going process improvements. This entails consolidating and maintaining reliable suppliers of resources and services, continually matching quality and demand. It involves finding opportunities for lower part costs without sacrificing quality, and monitoring supply gluts and shortages to manage fluctuating or spiking customer order volumes. It also necessitates being able to manage elements affecting manufacturing timeframes, for example, to shorten lead times and product-to-market deliveries.

At Gilchrist Metal Fabricating Company, we do everything we can to offer customers industry leading machining and fabrication capabilities with a constant focus on optimization and improvement. With this approach, we have developed relationships with businesses and organizations across the country who have come to rely on our ability to provide the best solution, regardless of complexity.

One of the key systems at work in our CNC machining and fabrication facility is the Kanban lean manufacturing system. By using the Kanban system for large machining and fabrication projects, our expert team can fine-tune our process in several different ways, enabling us to offer our customers more value with greater efficiency and more competitive lead times.

Another key to proving our loyalty to our valued customers is our financial management system and banking resources. These enable us to maintain our strong financial position and offer you favorable purchasing agreements for your ongoing projects.

Nimble with Industry Changes

We also understand how important it is to be prepared for changes in our industry and the economy. For example, do you know how beneficial or damaging the proposed tariffs on steel and other metals will be to your product and services objectives? Nobody really knows. But what we do know is that continually planning and applying our intelligence and energy in the right financial and engineering areas, we can build and manage the strong supplier relationship you need from us to optimize your project’s planning, management and production.

For further information about how we can help you better manage your next metals project, feel free to contact us at 603.889.2600.