CASE STUDY: A Make Vs. Buy Analysis
Dynamic Tube recently approached a new customer who is dealing with a common problem.
By winning them over with our technical expertise, on-time delivery, fair pricing, and quality control, Dynamic Tube solved their problem.
The Problem
For as long as anyone remembers, they’ve been fabricating all their own bent tubing parts in-house. Now, a handful of factors have come into play that has made it wise to investigate transferring their bent tubing parts to an outside source. Technological advances have allowed them to create a better product. And this customer is on the right side of Moore’s Law, adapting and evolving in turn.
In short, our customer’s end-users declared their preference for a different, more complex end-form to their tubing. One that our customer was not properly tooled for. Moreover, their new Machine designs have doubled the number of tubes they use, increasing part volume. And with more tubes in confined space, Engineering was required to add more complexity in their bends.
They Say Busy Is Good, Right?
What to do? Their new product advancements will situate them as an industry leader on the cutting edge. But it became apparent that their old in-house hand benders could not handle the increased volume and complexity of these new parts.
So the Customer performed a cost analysis. They looked at the cost of buying the dies required to make the new end-forms. They investigated purchasing a CNC bender to handle the more complex tubing bends and part volume. Ultimately the cost of a CNC bender could not be justified unless they kept it running night and day.
The Customer said, “and we don’t want to become a tube bender.” Tube bending is not part of their business model, and certainly not their core competency. After considering a cost vs. buy analysis of their bent tubing, it was determined that outsourcing was a good option.
The Era Of Specialization
That’s where Dynamic Tube comes in. Fabricated Tubing is our core competency. We specialize in attaining economy of scale with fabricated tubing. We bend tube all day, every day and have for 4o years.
By demonstrating our technical expertise and support– along with quality parts, fair pricing, and on-time delivery to the customer during the prototype and limited production builds, we earned their trust to handle not just their production volumes, but the legacy parts that had previously been hand bent.
This customer decided it was money well-spent to let us perform our job as specialists, freeing them up to focus on their core competencies.
By winning them over with our value proposition– technical expertise, fair pricing, on-time delivery, and rigid quality control, Dynamic Tube solved this customer’s build-vs-buy riddle. We now look forward to a mutually beneficial relationship that will last with a new Customer who’s excited about what we do for them
