Sometimes, when it comes down to the crunch and there’s an issue with equipment, it isn’t feasible to wait on a replacement part to be delivered by an OEM, which is why CBC regularly manufactures components for customers as part of their Local Production Requisition (LPR) service.
According to Leon Stefanec, National Business Development Manager for Food and Beverage, this service entails either CBC manufacturing components to customer requirements in their own workshops or contracting the job out to local engineering companies. In either case, the flexibility and adaptability to changingchanging circumstances becomes a solution for customers who are in a tight spot.
“OEM parts are sometimes unavailable or have long lead times when customers require a custom solution,” Leon says. “So, LPRs are a unique special offer that we provide. We have our own in-house qualified drafters or engineers who use the latest software to provide technical and manufacturing drawings which can then, in turn, be used to manufacture custom parts for our customers.”
Leon points to a recent example where a large-scale bakery, operating 24/7, required the services of CBC to supply a new 1.4-metre-long shaft for a robot packing machine that had broken one late afternoon.
“The broken shaft was preventing a large batch of finished baked goods from being packaged ready for distribution to a major supermarket chain,” Leon explains. “We were called and were able to visit the site to collect the broken shaft and quickly prepare a manufacturing drawing. From there, we recommended a higher grade of material to prevent a repeat of such a breakage. We then contacted a nearby engineering company that had the material in stock and could manufacture the shaft to the Motion Australia drawing out of regular business hours.”
The shaft was completed by roughly 9:30pm and delivered straight to the bakery for installation.
“Had the site waited for a new shaft to become available from the OEM suppliers, the production line would have been out of commission for several days,” Leon says. “The bakery’s maintenance team fitted the new shaft and completed the packaging process without any additional loss and no loss of product.”
This was an example of how CBC can quickly respond with its own talents and professional network to satisfy an immediate need by getting a broken piece of equipment replaced – although it’s more common for CBC to reverse engineer custom parts or manufacture entirely new items to rectify a precise customer problem, according to Leon.
“Each time we manufacture a new LPR item we identify it with a unique part number, which we file with our engineering department database along with relevant drawings, photos, and notes,” Leon says. “This unique number then becomes the item part number and is maintained within our catalogue system.”
“Should our customers require a repeat order of these LPR items our engineers simply extract the drawings and details from our database and issue a purchase order to any of our workshops to commence the manufacture.”
This service is of great utility to customers and has established CBC as a name to trust when the going gets tough.