Tire manufacturer of specialty tires for front-loaders, forklifts, bob cats, and other industrial vehicles.

Industry

Rubber (mostly bias) tire manufacturing

Problem/Challenge

The challenge faced by this customer was excessive demand for their specialty tires.

Solution

As a result of limited production facilities, the manufacturer closed his in-house ‘cement house’ and sent the work to APV on a permanent toll basis.

Results

• The customer freed up valuable floor space and labor that was quickly converted to the production of specialty tires.
• There was an immediate $500K reduction in the customer’s annual insurance premiums for this risk-laden operation.
• The cement now produced by APV is of a consistently higher quality than the batches produced in-house.
• Capital costs to support an in-house cement house dropped to zero, freeing up capital for other more urgent needs.

Timing

The transition from in-house production to APV produced cement took less than four weeks.

"‘Having the right amount of cement from our in-house department was always a crap shoot…we rarely had exactly what we needed, when we needed it. It was a nightmare to keep production moving at optimum rates when we manufactured our own cement. Having it outsourced to APV was the best thing we ever did…my job is much easier and less aggravating, and I know the quality of our product is better because of APV.’
"

Customer’s Production Planning Foreman