In this day in age, it can be challenging for companies to save money on a day to day basis when there is a need to purchase materials and equipment. There are 10 easy ways in order to save your company some money when dealing with the costs of metal stamped parts.

Metal Prices: With current fluctuation of metal prices, you may be able to find savings in an alternative material that you did not consider previously. For example, frequently we are able to substitute 1050 Annealed Spring Steel for HSLA with minor design modifications.

Tooling Requirements: Review your current tooling requirements for your components and determine if there are alterations that can be made to reduce complexity and maintain functionality. For example, changing square holes to circular holes drastically simplifies machining and tooling requirements. This will reduce your production time and your overall component cost.

Product Design: By analyzing the current design performance you may be able to identify areas of design modification that can reduce your costs. You may be able to alter your design slightly to provide advantages in other areas while maintaining the function and integrity of the part. Some changes would allow you to ship more parts together and deliver more parts in each shipment.

Services: If your component currently requires services from multiple vendors, investigate finding a partner that can supply all of these services for you. Not only will you save on shipping costs, but you will have one point of contact for the successful production of your component.

Production Volume: Has your production volume increased without reviewing your original design? Frequently the need for more components is met with a basic increase in production orders. When volume increases the opportunity arises to streamline your product design to increase manufacturability and production timelines. If you are still using your basic prototype design, now is the time to analyze where changes can be made to still achieve the required functionality from the component, while reducing costs.

Layouts: By changing the layout of your components you can produce more pieces using less material. If your original layout had 10 parts on your design and you can fit just one more, you are now getting 10% more products for the same material price!

Delivery Scheduling: Consider how alternative delivery schedules or carriers may impact your profitability for each component

Company Partner: Make sure your current metal stamping partner has a deep understanding of your area of expertise. Frequently different vertical markets will require different production steps or documentation.

Project Management: Review the project information and feedback you are provided for reliability, expediency, quality and accuracy. If you do not have strong project management for your metal stamping components, you will lose time managing the project yourself.

Alternate Machinery: It is possible that different machinery may allow you to condense your production runs by combining feature creation. By reducing the number of passes, tooling setups/fixtures, and manual machining the cost of your component can decrease.

By keeping in mind these 10 quick and easy steps, you will be surprised at how much money your company will end up saving.