All those things are great, but what do they mean, and why has Michlin Metals been able to stay in business for 30 years come 2014? Let's look at an example. A new government aerospace customer calls w/a problem. It's a Wednesday night after a major holiday at 4pm. Everyone in the country is on vacation or off early. The customer has been looking for material for a day already and have been unsuccessful in procurement. We have never worked w/this customer before but suffice it to say we would want to not only take this singular order but become a core supplier of theirs. The customer has a plane on the ground, again it's Wednesday at 4pm, and they need it off the ground by Friday at 0800. (that's 8am in military time) Now what happens?
The customer then goes on to tell us about the metal they need and that they need it w/in 36 hours. They needed a cut piece of metal that requires heat treatment to a specific condition. Well heat treating metal can take anywhere from several hours (both in the oven and then cooling) to several days(in and out of the oven, cooling, reheating, cooling, quenching tempering, re-annealing, and so on). Luckily this material only required an 8 hour cycle.
That being said we still had to work fast. We had a piece of this material dropped off that very night to the heat treater so that by 6am when they arrived the next morning they could pop it right into the oven and start the process. The piece of metal wasn't very long and wasn't a large diameter bar so in itself wasn't very expensive. The heat treatment however was a different story. In order to have this material expedited we had to push everything else off and just do this piece. That's not easy to do and doesn't come cheap. Not many people have a relationship w/their heat treater to even request a same day heat treat...this is why when the customer called us he had explained that not a single other supplier/processor in the country could comply and provide material in their required time frame.
So fast forward to 2pm Thursday. The material is now cooled, packed and ready to ship via UPS overnight to the customer. The fact that we accomplished heat treating metal that was ready to ship w/in 20 hours...is nearly miraculous, what's even crazier is that by the time the material was done, we hadn't even received a formal purchase order. However, that wasn't a huge deal based on the overall status of our new customer. We got the purchase order worked out and shipped the material overnight.
8am Friday morning the customer had their material. 36 hours total. We took raw material in a 12' bar, cut it to a shorter piece, delivered it to the heat treater, had it heat treated, cooled it, packed it, shipped it and was able to provide another customer w/exceptional service. That is why Michlin Metals has been in business for nearly 30 years. Granted, today's market is driven by price b/c the demand for steel is diminished
by current economic conditions. That being said, if a customer has a need, sometimes money isn't the only factor in their purchasing decision, if your company needs the job done properly, in an expedited fashion, you can always count on Michlin to supply you the necessary material in the time frame needed.
Michlin Metals is a Woman Owned Small Business Aerospace Metal and Stainless Steel Distributor. Follow Michlin on Twitter @MichlinMetals, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ or on the Web at www.michlinmetals.com. More on the author on Google+.
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