Navigating the ever-changing supply chain (Part 2)

MATT LEPP (VDG): It’s the same thing with the rubber. Our standard lead time is one to two weeks. For a period, we were seeing up to five, six, seven weeks to get just regular cured rubber delivered. Now that drove us to start stocking a lot of our material. It’s the same thing on wood for skids. There was a point where we had enough material for skids for about six months, just because we weren’t sure about the supply chain yet. And it’s the same thing for trucking. This is why we’re putting a lot into developing our U.S. manufacturing capabilities. Truck drivers – especially Canadian truckers – for a period of time simply did not want to go into America. It was very hard to get trucks. Instead of being able to call for a truck the same day, we were having to schedule two, three, four, five days in advance trying to get it picked up – and we learned from that. Thankfully, our lead times didn’t really change at any point through the process. Our reliance on third parties to do anything from machining, lagging or any sort of plating was substantially reduced overall. It has been a substantial investment in supply of raw material. But, we’ve been able to keep our lead times down and our prices stable.

KURT HANBY (ITAMCO): We’re a curative device manufacturer, and over the last two months, we’ve seen significant increases in our lead time for raw material, specific alloys, a lot of specialty metals – and I’m talking 26, 30 weeks. The manufacturing time is 12 weeks, and you add 26 weeks onto that.

SEAN MARTELL (PRECO ELECTRONICS): Everybody’s in the same boat. When you’ve got these disruptions and long lead times, it becomes a real challenge. Are we going to run short? Are we forecasting properly? One of the things we’re doing is reaching out to our end users and asking for a forecast. We’re needing some predictability to be able to meet the deadline. I’d imagine everyone’s doing that communication right now. It’s hugely important if you’re tied to a supplier or to a customer and you’re wanting to maintain the relationships.

BARRY THOMAS (L&H INDUSTRIAL): In the vendor industry, our main concern is how you budget for 2021 and what’s going to happen to 2022. It’s going to affect our 2021 manpower and then roll into 2022, which is eventually going to affect our customers.

MARTELL: We’re hoping our relationships are paying off with our suppliers and that they’re staying loyal to us so we have that edge on the competition. But that’s the reality we’re looking at right now.

SHEPHERD: Communication and especially transparency with your customers is really important. Making sure they understand what you’re facing. The producers are seeing it from other suppliers and other equipment.

TOMASO VENEROSO (AMCAST): I agree we are more or less all in the same boat logistically, but we’ve been able to keep up because we have a vast amount of logistic coordinators and logistic vendors that can help us out. In the tragedy, we were lucky because we have operations in Europe, Canada and the U.S. We learned at the very beginning – as early as December [2019] – what this pandemic was about, and we started back in Europe stocking raw material and pumping up the investment to be more efficient and faster. So, in that sense, we have been able to be in a position to compensate for the inevitable shortage of raw materials that’s coming up ahead and budget for it.

Read part one of the discussion here. 

« Prev Page 1 2 Next Page »