Four ways to speed up production on your next project

Using their experience in the industry helping clients succeed, the experts at Zygology have put together four ways to ensure your next project meets challenging deadlines, surpasses clients’ expectations, and ultimately grows your business.

An efficient supply chain is a key factor in determining the success of any manufacturing business. Your ability to deliver on projects promptly and navigate additional demands requires efficient processes in place. So how can we speed up production on a project? Actually, there are four practical steps that could make all the difference.

Cut the bolts

An essential aspect of your manufacturing process – whether you’re working with industrial machinery, automotive parts or access control containers – is going to be fastening. This can often be an extremely labour-intensive process, requiring multiple bonds and proper implementation across 100s or even 1,000s of individual parts. This is why using the right solution for the job is so crucial.

Although commonly used threaded fasteners, such as screws, nuts, and bolts are low cost and do allow for convenient disassembly, they are slow to use, consist of multiple components, and require some operator skill if uniform and vibration-resistant joints are to be created. Riveting, however, provides users with extremely efficient, low-cost assembly in both piece part cost and labour time. As very little training is required this enables the use of only semi-skilled labour.

By incorporating a rivet and tool system approach, your shop floor workers can control the consistency of the joint process – which benefits your manufacturing as a whole with an extremely simple and repeatable task. As variety and volume grow, this becomes more important where there is little time for staff training or correcting assembly issues.

The convenience riveting offers can greatly enhance and speed up your assembly process – providing a permanent joint, without all the additional washers, thread adhesives and bolts needed to ensure a strong bond with threaded fasteners. This completely mitigates concerns over poorly installed parts and ensures a problem-free service life for your product.

Using proven fasteners and installation equipment from trusted manufacturers such as Stanley and Qonnect offers you the quality you require, whether you are producing heavy duty off-road vehicles, small electrical devices, or anything in between.

Don’t make it, source it

We all know quality when we see it, hear it, feel it – but sometimes it can be hard to know exactly what we’re experiencing when we say, “Now that’s premium”. It’s important that your end-product provides that sense throughout the user experience of course, but why go to all the trouble of manufacturing it when there already exist solutions that can do it for you?

Established industry leaders in customer touchpoints like Southco (manufacturing hinges, handles and latches, etc) have already gone to the trouble of putting hours upon hours of research and development into crafting high-quality and durable solutions. So, save yourself the man-hours it would take to research, design, test and produce your own in-house solutions when the problem has already been solved for you.

Potentially the biggest timesaver for outsourcing your customer touchpoints is instant access to the minute details that come from industry veterans’ reports when conducting longevity and durability tests.

Zygology has ready-to-go solutions for just about every type of application. From RVs to bicycles and boats to cabinets, Zygology and Southco have seen it all before – and have a way of improving the way a door opens, closes, or stays where it is. If latching is your thing, Southco offers everything from simple mechanical cam latches to motorised and remote electronically controlled plug and play solutions.

Southco products offer a shortcut for manufacturers to bypass the tricky R&D stage and deliver a high-quality product in a timely and cost-effective manner.

Practice makes perfect

For many decades, self-clinching nuts, studs and standoffs have been a core part of sheet metal fabrication. As sole distributors for PEM brand fasteners, Zygology is at the forefront of this technology, selling millions of fasteners each year.

PEM created the self-clinch fastener and although heavily copied, nobody has yet managed to match, let alone exceed, the attention to detail which goes into making PEM fasteners the most reliable and trusted in the world.

Always keeping up with the latest technology, PEM is now a leading player in the production of self-clinching fasteners designed for surface mounting on electronic printed circuit boards. This technology is saving PCB assemblers millions of man-hours worldwide whilst also improving quality and reducing wastage.

There are a lot of moving parts involved in designing and developing your next project and a lot of steps to get nailed down before your designs can come to life. Prototyping is one of these fundamental steps. With access to PEM’s state of the art factory and technical centre in Galway, Zygology can help you all the way through the early concept stage, to specially made samples for production, and then extended salt spray, electrical continuity and mechanical integrity testing.

Drop the slow suppliers

Finally, this is the easiest one for you to action and immediately see improvements in your supply chain performance. All you need to do is stop using unreliable suppliers who are constantly missing lead times, mispacking orders and leaving you to deal with automated helplines when all you want is a person to talk to.

With over 40 years’ experience, Zygology supplies more than just the type of fastener you want – it supplies the in-depth knowledge from experts to work with you and consult, finding the right solution for your needs. And its support teams typically reply within one hour. Prevent bottlenecks with Zygology’s speedy service and keep yourself on track to deliver for your clients.