Consulting Services for Equipment Manufacturing Companies
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:
Operations
Our Offer
More than
95%
increase in on-time delivery
Upto
50%
Reduction in
lead time
Upto
40%
Increase in
plant output
Upto
20%
Reduction
in inventory
Reduction in expediting
Costs
like overtime and emergency freights
Improved
cash-to-cash cycle
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 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 lead 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.
Vector offers consulting services to help equipment manufacturing companies reduce lead time of delivery, improve delivery reliability and increase plant output. Find out how
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Sales Bandwidth
Our Offer
More than
50%
release in sales
team capacity
Increase in
rate of acquisition
of new customers
Maximising sale rate
from existing customer base
Increase in
overall enquiry base
During periods of underload on equipment manufacturing plants, the pressure on operations teams dips while the pressure on the sales teams (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 develop customers are mostly consumed by transactional activities associated with existing customer orders.
With the help of Vector’s consulting services, equipment manufacturing, or custom manufacturing companies can increase bandwidth and improve effectiveness of their sales teams.
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Spares and Services
Our Offer
Enhance to near
100%
Availability of Spares at Point of Sale
By Around
25%
Reduced Inventory in Supply Chain
Upto
50%
Turn Around Time at Service Centres
More than
90%
Increase on time
Service Performance
More than
20%
Increase in spares sales
One of the ways equipment manufacturing companies can expand market share in many equipment categories is by improving availability of spares for equipment under breakdown and rapid resolution of service issues. This is because equipment uptime is critical for customers. However, ensuring availability of equipment spares for service is a major challenge for companies considering the enormous variety of parts involved. To complicate things further, some of the 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.
Vector offers consulting services to equipment manufacturing companies to help them manage spare parts availability without increasing inventory
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New Product Development
Our Offer
Upto
50%
Reduced Project
Lead Time
Upto
50%
Increased Output from
Existing Resource Base
Reduced Rework
Improved
Quality of Output
Rapid
Mass Production
Stabilisation
Reduced Stress
on People and Resources
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&D is inherently uncertain, enormous workload 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 launch of new equipment and post launch quality complaints.
Vector offers equipment companies or other custom manufacturing companies consulting and implementation services which can stabilize operations in R&D units and increase the companies’ output and reliability.
Know more about how Vector’s consulting services can enable equipment manufacturing companies to tackle the problems of chronic delays and poor output in new product development.
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Case Studies
Discover how Vector’s consulting services enabled organizations like Kirloskar Oil Engine, Godrej & Boyce and many others to transform their operations using “pull” systems of Theory of Constraints and secure for themselves a competitive advantage in their markets.
Clients
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:
Client Speaks
With three times more output from the same capacity and reduced working capital requirement, we were able to improve our ROCE by three times.
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
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.
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.
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."
