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Vector has developed bespoke solutions for equipment manufacturing or custom manufacturing companies to help them identify and address constraints in operations, sales, spares &amp; services, or new product development that limit consistent sales and profit growth.&nbsp;Working with companies like Laxmi Machine Works (LMW), Godrej Material Handling, RPG Raychem, Kirloskar Oil Engines Ltd. Bajaj Electricals (Luminaries Division), amongst many others, Vector has helped clients bring about excellence in equipment delivery, turbo-charge their sales &amp; business development efforts and set new benchmarks in after-sales services.&nbsp;

An equipment manufacturing or custom manufacturing company’s ability to grow its sales and profits consistently is limited by constraints in the following areas like Operations, Sales, Spares and Services and New Product Development:

Consulting Services for Equipment Manufacturing Companies

Analyses of top custom manufacturing companies, including manufacturers of capital goods and custom manufacturers of machinery and equipment, which design a product and make to order, show that only a handful have realized healthy sales, profits & ROI in the last decade.

BA industries

Equipment Manufacturing BA

We have partnered with major names in the equipment manufacturing industry to create and implement radical solutions which have redefined industry benchmarks. These names include:

BA Clients

Clients

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Client Speaks

A: We provide physical security solutions (safes, lockers, strong room doors) to banks and to other institutions that need them. Each product requires over 50 components; a few of these are made in-house, the rest are sourced from suppliers. In the past, we battled severe desynchronization of components which meant significant loss of capacity. When we solved the problem of desynchronization, we also saw improvement in output.
In 2010, we started implementation of Theory of Constraints processes by partnering with Vector Consulting Group. After deploying the flow concepts of TOC, synchronization of components at assembly improved dramatically. Our manufacturing units began achieving record output almost every day of the month.
Moreover, firefighting reduced significantly. This released the bandwidth of management for use on improving manufacturing line set-ups and for working on capacity release projects. These efforts further increased output

Q. What actions did you take to improve plant output?

A: We had always assumed that higher WIP leads to higher output. We realized that this was not correct. One of the biggest paradigm changes we implemented is the system of pull - inventory is pulled into the system based on the daily gap in a pre-defined WIP level(which is now half of what it used to be before implementation). Lower WIP meant focus on fewer orders, and therefore, better flow.

Q. What were the major paradigm shifts for you and your managers?

A: The biggest challenge was changing the mindset of managers. They had to be convinced of the merits of the new way of working (daily planning instead of monthly planning; letting go of local efficiency targets and aligning manufacturing to fulfil priority orders). When our people saw dramatic improvements in inventory and output in a very short time, their initial skepticism made way for infectious enthusiasm.

Q. What challenges did you face during implementation? How did you align the various stakeholders to the new change?

A: Cultural change was an effect of the implementation. For example, desynchronization of components required for assembly and massive month-end skew were sources of stress and frequent conflicts between departments. When flow became uniform, and output increased, teamwork improved significantly.

"With three times more output from the same capacity and reduced working capital requirement, we were able to improve our ROCE by three times."

Q. What cultural change was required to implement the new paradigms?

Being part of a cyclical industry means that typically, most equipment manufacturing companies go through periods of ‘flood’ and ‘famine’. During a flood (when the market is booming and a backlog of orders goes up significantly), companies experience the ‘constraint’ in operations. Expediting orders to ensure timely delivery and the perennial struggle for matching components on the shop floor leads to significant wastage of capacity and month-end skew in equipment production. These prevent a company from exploiting its operational assets to its full potential.&nbsp;Vector’s equipment manufacturing consulting practice helps client companies optimize operations, reduce the lead time of delivery, improve delivery reliability and increase plant output. Find out how.

Operations

increase in on-time delivery

Our Offer

More than

reduction in lead time

Upto

increase in plant output

reduction in inventory

improvement in cash-to-cash cycle

During periods of underload at equipment manufacturing plants, the pressure on the operations team decreases, while the pressure on the sales team to procure orders increases. Sales teams are often unable to respond fittingly to the challenge as they lack the bandwidth to expand their efforts in the market. The sales teams’ energies, which ideally should be used to drive sales growth by developing customers, are consumed mainly by transactional activities associated with existing customer orders.&nbsp;Vector’s equipment manufacturing consulting practice helps custom manufacturing companies to increase bandwidth and improve the effectiveness of their sales teams.

Sales Bandwidth

release of sales team's capacity

increase in new customer acquisition rate

increase in sales from existing customer base

Up to

increase in overall enquiry base

One of the ways equipment manufacturing companies can expand market share in many equipment categories is by improving the availability of spares for equipment under breakdown and rapid resolution of service issues. This is because equipment uptime is critical for customers. However, ensuring the availability of equipment spares for service is a major challenge for companies, considering the enormous variety of parts involved. To complicate things further, some equipment parts are in frequent demand while others, often called “stranger” parts, are needed infrequently. Consequently, when companies try to improve sales and service, they suffer the downside of cash being tied up in slow-moving inventory.&nbsp;Vector offers management consulting services to equipment manufacturing companies to help them manage spare parts availability without increasing inventory.

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Spares and Services

availability of spares at point of sale

Enhance

reduced inventory in the supply chain

Around

improvement in turn around time at service centres

Increase on time service performance

increase in spares sales

Creating new equipment and new variants of equipment is challenging for the new product development departments of equipment manufacturing companies. In addition to the fact that R&amp;D is inherently uncertain, enormous workloads and heavy dependence on external suppliers make the task more difficult. Added to this is the complexity of being forced to multitask across the initial stages of projects and the emergent residual work on equipment variants for which customer orders have been secured. Consequently, equipment manufacturing companies have to routinely contend with rework, delays in product stabilization, delays in the launch of new equipment and post-launch quality complaints.&nbsp;Vector offers management consulting and implementation services to equipment manufacturing or other custom manufacturing companies, which can optimize operations in R&amp;D units and increase the companies’ R&amp;D output and reliability. Know more about how Vector’s equipment manufacturing consulting practice enables equipment manufacturing companies to tackle the problems of chronic delays and poor output in new product development.

New Product Development

reduced project lead time

increased output from existing resource base

Reduced rework

Improved quality of output

Rapid mass production stabilisation

Reduced stress on people and resources

industries

Equipment Manufacturing

Vector Consulting Group helps industrial equipment manufacturing firms develop agile new product development, operations, sales and service to enhance ROI.