AT A GLANCE
The customer is no longer in a critical situation regarding their on-time shipping and experienced a 20% improvement in 2023 alone.
The customer recognized Acro for this achievement by giving Acro a suppler award and continues to transfer Acro dies years later
Objective
A company that is an industry leader in automated clamping solutions approached Acro 3 years ago with a crucial need for a stamper to run, maintain, and refurbish over 80+ of their metal stamping dies. Acro was able to leverage our robust in-house toolroom capabilities to get these dies repaired and fitted into our hybrid servo presses. As their demand for parts grew, this customer found their old stamper couldn’t keep with die maintenance due to limited in-house toolroom capabilities and struggled to deliver parts to the customer on time. The customer was in a crisis due to severe delays to their own on-time delivery; because of the delayed and quality issues with provided stampings.
Solution
Transferring metal stamping dies and tooling may seem like a daunting task, but through planning and collaboration several of Acro’s customers have had much success in transferring their dies from their previous metal stamper to Acro.
In Acro’s transfer process we assess what tooling is suitable for transfer to Acro and we will make any updates to the dies that are required to run the tooling in our presses. Once the tooling is setup to run and parts are made, Acro does a full Production Part Approval Process (PPAP) and submits the PPAP paperwork (and parts) to the customer for approval prior to a full production run. Once approved, the production quality and inspection frequency is performed adhering to ISO 2589-1 AQL Level II 1. for critical dimensions and 4.0 for non-critical dimensions.
This customer was so satisfied with the quality improvements, improved on-time delivery, and cost savings when moving their dies to Acro; they continue to transfer additional dies to Acro to this day.
Benefits
Lower Maintenance Costs Through Technology
Retrofitting Dies to Run in our more efficient A/C Servo Presses allow them to run with less jarring; resulting in lower maintenance costs which we can pass along to our customers. Proactively inspecting and sharpening the tooling before stamping, re-designing and updating tooling, making/maintaining spare parts, and creating maintenance logs to record work performed on each die are all ways that Acro has reduced die repair costs and secondary labor to create cost savings for our customer.
Reduced Lead Times & Increased Production Capacity for Customer
With Acro’s robust in-house toolroom capabilities and ability to retrofit dies to run in our hybrid servo presses, the customer has experienced up to a 25% reduction in lead times over the last 3 years. Acro’s capacity allows us to run and keep inventory of 90% of the customer’s parts to maintain inventory prior to releases being put on.
The customer increased annual usage on some parts over 80% the last 3 years and Acro has kept up with demand and on-time delivery.
Enhanced Quality Assurance
Overall, part quality for the customer increased tremendously after transferring the dies to Acro. When transferring dies to Acro, the customer approved a PPAP prior to any part deliveries were made which proactively combatted quality concerns that could arise with a die transfer. Acro had the toolroom capabilities to do the much-needed maintenance work on the transferred dies. With the prior stamper, the customer ignored many out of tolerance features on the parts. Now with Acro, the necessary tooling maintenance is completed to get the parts within specification. Whenever there is a concern with the part specification, Acro works collaboratively with the customer to understand the needs of the part to proactively resolve any potential issues.
AT A GLANCE
The customer is no longer in a critical situation regarding their on-time shipping and experienced a 20% improvement in 2023 alone.
The customer recognized Acro for this achievement by giving Acro a suppler award and continues to transfer Acro dies years later
We have a truly collaborative relationship with Acro that has led to improved on time delivery to our customers.
See How You Can Save With Transferring Your Dies To Acro
Almost all dies can be retrofitted to run in the latest technology presses.