NOW-Tech Industries has a great reputation. It delivers high-quality parts to its customers in aerospace and defense (A&D) and other industries. Its components have been used in critical life-support equipment for every major U.S. space program since Apollo, including the space shuttle and space station.

But as Henry Ford once said, "You can’t build a reputation on what you’re going to do." The market has a short memory and good job shops like NOW-Tech are always girding themselves against the pressures that every A&D supplier faces: finding ways to deliver shorter lead times and lower prices while maintaining top quality. With that in mind, NOW-Tech—with annual revenues of $6 million—staked its future on a $1 million investment in a Makino modular machining center.

"If you can’t make it for less, someone else will, so there is a lot of pressure on the supply chain," said company president Paul Nowicki. "That’s how we justified committing 17 percent of annual revenues to this new solution. It’s a matter of survival.

"With conventional machining systems, there’s no way to beat the escalating time-to-market challenges. "Utilizing the standard job shop procedures meant that orders were often started late, new tooling wasn’t always ready on time, setups often took too long and overall machine utilization was too low in spite of a large backlog of orders. And it was difficult to reduce costs and lower prices on typically erratic job-shop orders," Nowicki said.

To deliver what customers wanted—shorter lead times, on-time delivery, top quality and lower prices—NOW-Tech invested in a flow cell consisting of two Makino A55 high-speed horizontal machining centers linked by a Makino linear pallet management system. This cell includes 12 pallet stocker stations and two work-setting stations where parts are loaded, unloaded and inspected.

"When we made the decision that the investment was justified, we really didn’t have any work committed to the cell," Nowicki said. "We made this decision as a strategic move and had enough confidence that we knew we would win work with this concept." And return on investment is already adding up. "The flow cell has allowed us to win a couple of long-term contracts," Nowicki said. "We’ll probably ship $600,000 to $800,000 in revenue a year off of that investment.

"Having a dedicated cell producing similar products made it possible for NOW-Tech to cut lead time from eight weeks to 10 days. Setup on a part used to take anywhere from six to eight hours. "We’ve taken it down to zero. The fact that I have zero setup time, because I can dedicate tooling and leave the jobs set up, means that I have ultimate flexibility, " said Nowicki. "This has reduced our customers’ costs 15 to 25 percent. Everybody’s winning. So that’s another way to justify the investment: we get more volume, and as the volume goes up, the amortization and fixed costs go down.

"As the cell heads toward capacity, it will become NOW-Tech’s most productive machining center by a substantial margin. And it is a key element in NOW-Tech’s strategy of meeting the future’s increasingly tough demands.

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