Outsourcing the production of its mechanical components to Misumi of the Americas, Inc, has enabled Autosplice, Inc, a worldwide manufacturer of innovative interconnection machines and connectors for the electrical and electronic industries, to realize per-part cost savings of up to 70%.
Headquartered in San Jose, CA, Autosplice credits its success to an enterprise-wide commitment to innovative design, balanced with an overriding desire to contain costs. David Shealey, Autosplice''s director of Internal Production Machine Development, began purchasing components from Misumi to improve cost efficiencies several years ago, after receiving a catalog.
"The Misumi catalog is a design engineer''s candy store," says Shealey, "with a huge variety of custom parts available quickly and in small quantities. We are now building a good number of our custom manufacturing equipment from the frame up using Misumi components."
Shealey conservatively estimates that Autosplice''s per-part cost savings ranges from 25-70% when compared to in-house production or outsourcing to a local machine shop. "The fact that Misumi has no minimum order quantity and has never charged a setup fee or requested a drawing for a custom component saves us 20-50% right up front."
Nearly 90% of Shealey''s mechanical parts requirements, which include linear shafts, bearings, spur gears, collars and rollers, are now sourced from Misumi, he reports.
"One of the more amazing things was finding that raw material pieces were available cut to the desired outside dimensions, finished, packaged, and shipped at a very competitive price when compared to cutting and squaring the stock in house," notes Shealey.
"The cost and time savings are considerable," he continues. "It''s great to have one catalog that provides one-stop shopping for everything from actuation and control system components to complete complex machine designs."
According to Ron Dziuda, Misumi''s marketing manager, the time savings experienced by Autosplice and other Misumi customers results from design engineers'' ability to download part drawings directly from the Misumi website, where they can be parametrically dimensioned and inserted into their drawings. Most of the more popular drawing formats are supported, including AutoCAD, Mechanical Desktop, Smart Sketch, Solid Edge, Inventor, Pro/ENGINEER, Catia, IntelliCAD, and TurboCAD, making this feature extremely efficient and easy to use. As the custom components are defined and downloaded, the part number is established.
"Our customers are looking for the right partner, along with the right parts," notes Dziuda. "Misumi''s more than 40 years of experience working with design engineers involved in assembly automation gives us a rare insight into their needs."