Market: Industrial Equipment

Project breadth: $3 million; 250 assemblies

Harness & assembly types: 

• Complex harness assemblies of both fixed and variable lengths
• Electromechanical assemblies: panel assemblies and control boxes

Customer needs and challenges:

• Help converting VDE-certified designs and components to UL/CSA certified designs and components
• Highly variable production order releases
  • High volume of configure-to-order releases based on end-user installation requirements
  • Kitting of finished assemblies into installer-friendly service packs
  • Short lead times
• One-week lead time on service orders

Project summary:
The customer was a European OEM looking to more deeply penetrate North American markets. Their core products were designed around meeting European VDE certification requirements and needed to be updated/modified to meet UL/CSA certification. The customer created an internal sourcing team to identify and evaluate Mexican manufacturing operations with the technical and sourcing expertise to support their UL/CSA-driven redesign. After a six-month investigation, Mega Techway was selected from a field of five contract manufacturers that were evaluated.

The initial project startup included one customer product line and was scheduled over six months. Over that time, Mega Techway provided numerous suggestions on component selection and assembly design not only to meet UL/CSA certification but also to reduce cost and improve product manufacturability and quality. Kanban and safety stock programs were also implemented to serve the customer’s scheduling and logistics needs as well as development of an online portal for MRP sharing, PO placement, invoicing and ASNs to serve their administrative needs; each task required a fast and flexible IT response from Mega Techway.  

Based on the success of the initial project kickoff, the customer added four additional product lines over the ensuing 12 months.