The past two years could be simply summed up as years of exciting discoveries and team building.
After setting up the micro machining workshop, we have discovered that
the high precision parts we make are highly sought after in space,
telecommunications and the medical industries. And it is not just the
parts themselves that excite our customers - it is our ability to work
closely with them in the field of research and development, allowing
them to take their project to next level.
Here is just one example of such co-operation. A well established
customer has approached us last year with a request for a part that
they've been struggling with for quite some time. The part is complex in
the sense that it requires not just precision, but extreme consistency,
meaning that a part made today will be identical to one made six months
ago as to one to be made in a year from now.
They have tried to have it made in Germany, Switzerland and the US. The
results were good, but not perfect. Consequently, due to the lack of
consistency, they were struggling to prove the theoretical concept in a
practical way, and then to fine tune it further. They knew that the
magic happens in a region where the "junction holes" are between 70 and
75 microns in size, but the parts they were getting were simply too
inconsistent, varying from batch to batch.
After a few attempts, and for the first time in the life of their
project, we were delivering both 70 and 75 micron holes. They were over
the moon. Not only have we beaten our competitors, but we are also able
to hit even more specific dimensions - we can make perfect parts 'on
demand' with holes of 72 and 74 microns in size. We took them to the
next level. Why? Because our young team is crazy eager to prove
ourselves as makers of parts that others call 'impossible to make'. And
the more impossible parts we make, the more customers we have knocking on our door.
The problem is, we have no capacity to scale up, to make parts in volume and fully satisfy a customer's demands. Those
high precision parts take hours to make. For example, running both Kern
mills for 18 hours per day would produce 25 to 30 parts per week. Our
customer needs 500. And this is just one project, by one customer, in
one industry.
Being at the crossroads means at least two options:
One, to continue to grow organically, and stay at a prototyping service level. Zero risk, satisfying but painfully slow.
Option two, to seize the opportunity to expand; to double our manufacturing capacity. Hard and pricey.
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