Three Considerations for Choosing a Metal Forming Company

When you’re considering sending important metal forming work to a new vendor, you need to do your homework. Will your new vendor be reliable? Will it be able to deliver the work as specified? Can it handle complex orders? Will it be able to do the work on budget and deliver within the time specified?

While there are many factors to consider, experienced engineers know that the three most important are expertise, quality and delivery. A failure in any one of these three areas can wreak havoc on a project and cause damage to your bottom line and reputation. But beyond taking a company’s word for it, how do you know if it has the expertise, can deliver on quality, and will deliver on time? Consider the following for each area:

  1. Expertise

When choosing a metal forming company, its expertise should be among your top considerations. A good way to determine how much expertise it has is by looking at the depth and breadth of services it offers.

The ability to form deep-drawn, long or complex shapes like negative lips is a good indication of its expertise. These shapes are made with machines and tooling that require significant skill and experience.

Other considerations are the kinds of forming it can offer — such as deep draw stamping, hydroforming or fluid cell forming — and the ability to work with a variety of metals and alloys.  Does it also offer heat treating services? If the company you’re researching can answer those questions affirmatively, it’s a good sign that it has the expertise you need.

  1. Quality

The quality of the component your vendor delivers is often of critical importance to your final product. When components don’t conform to strict tolerances and precise specifications, downstream assembly can be compromised.

To ensure your vendor can meet your quality specifications, consider its certifications. Is it ISO 9001 certified for quality management? Has it earned AS9100 certification for site quality management? If your forming company offers heat treating, does it have certification from the National Aerospace and Defense Contractors Accreditation Program (Nadcap) for heat treating?

All of these certifications are important indicators of quality that you should consider before you send them your work.

  1. Delivery

With so many operations relying on just-in-time delivery, you need to be able to count on your metal forming company to deliver components on time, when promised. Delivering orders hours or even days late can lead to lost productivity. Therefore, ask about on-time delivery averages, and don’t be afraid to ask for references.

As a trusted partner for our clients, Jones Metal Products Company takes pride in consistently achieving 98 percent on-time delivery averages. Because it’s so important, it’s a measure that we track daily. We also benchmark our performance against those of competing metal stampers and forming companies that participate in annual studies of the Precision Metalforming Association.

If you would like to talk to Jones Metal Company about forming components for your next project, contact us or call 888-479-9566.