The Benefits of an In-House Machine Shop
There is a significant upfront investment that needs to be made before a manufacturing company can bring all of its machining in-house, but the benefits quickly outweigh the costs. Some of the benefits of establishing a full-service in-house machine shop include increased quality control, more flexibility in finished product characteristics, lower overall costs, and quicker production schedules.
Greater Quality Control: One of the most important factors affecting finished part quality is the quality of a machine’s integral parts. Small imperfections in machine parts can have a compounding effect on finished product imperfections. With an in-house machine shop, we can ensure that each production machine is constructed with the highest quality raw materials and perfectly meets specs. This attention to detail is evident in finished product quality.
More Finished Product Flexibility: If a customer decides they would like to tweak the characteristics of a product coming out of one of our lines, we can quickly create the new parts we need to resume production at the new specs. If we did not produce and maintain our production equipment in-house, we would have to go through a process of ordering a new part, inspecting and approving a sample part, waiting for raw materials to arrive, waiting for production of the part to complete, and then waiting for the new part to be shipped. All these steps add time and cost to the process and effectively reduce a manufacturers ability to make small product modifications. In the automotive and green energy industry new technologies are frequently being discovered and the ability to efficiently keep up with the market is paramount.
Lower Costs: Having an in-house tooling shop means less transportation to and from suppliers, less time and manpower spent in vendor management, fewer inspection steps (only one company must confirm quality before use, not two), and a lower cost per machine over time. This all adds up to significant savings.
Shorter Production Times: Fewer inspection steps, less transportation, a faster and more reliable process of communicating part requirements (in-house shop workers will likely be far more familiar with your products and needs than any external team), a greater ability to prioritize machining projects based on importance and optimize workflows, and eliminated vendor management steps, are all the effect of in-house machining. This all results in a tighter overall production schedule.
Increased Productivity: In-house machining can ensure that all production equipment is of the highest quality. High quality manufacturing equipment will have less downtime, and an in-house shop will further reduce that downtime through faster maintenance timeframes. Having machines that work exactly as planned and can be quickly fixed, changed, or fine-tunes means that production staff can spend as much time as possible producing.
ACS has been building and maintaining our own production equipment since 1988 and our machine shop is staffed with some of the most talented machinists in the world, including the original inventor of the automated press machine. Give us a call today to see how we can put our machine shop to work and create the perfect components for any of your industrial applications.
