From Inquiry To Integration A Case Study

This story, like many at JBC, began with an inbound email. We received an email inquiry from a high-profile commercial space technology company looking for a converter to fabricate a complex part for use in an antenna stack-up. They’d been having difficulty sourcing the part and needed a partner willing to put in the engineering time and resources to find the best solution for their problem. The project required kiss cutting dozens of very small foil dots on a clear liner. It was no easy task.

JBC delivered.

The Background

After working closely with their engineering team and putting in hours of research and development time both on and off the press, JBC created a part that worked for them—but was immediately designed out in favor of a much simpler solution that did not involve die-cutting. Although they didn’t move forward with our solution, they were impressed with our responsiveness and ability to engineer an efficient and innovative part, so we were top of mind when the next challenge arose.

Less than three years later, JBC is now ingrained in this customer’s supply chain, works with multiple divisions within the company, and fabricates over 190 active parts for them.

The Story

An integral part of any successful manufacturing partnership is collaboration. Nowhere is that better demonstrated than in this customer relationship.

This manifests itself in all three foundational pillars of our business:

Engineering Innovation,
Supply Chain Optimization, and
Manufacturing Excellence.

Engineering Innovation

JBC meets regularly with the customer’s engineering team to review product design and discuss engineered solutions unique to each application. Throughout our years of collaboration with the customer, we have developed a thorough understanding of their requirements, their goals, and their methods of reaching those goals. This close relationship and intimate knowledge allows JBC to act as an extension of the customers' engineering team, helping them convert even the most challenging design into a reality.

Engineering In action

The customer required a part with strict quality requirements. Because the part was a white sticker on a clear liner, the composition of the part made visual defect detection difficult – even for our automated inspection equipment. To solve this issue, our team came up with a creative solution that utilized cross polarization to essentially turn anything white into black, and vice versa. The clear section of the film became white, which allowed any blemishes or defects to become easily visible.

Supply Chain Optimization

JBC has the pleasure of having relationships with many of the best material suppliers in the industry, which grants us access to a wide range of high-performance materials and material knowledge. We have leveraged this expertise many times when working with this customer to ensure we have the proper materials on hand to keep up with their demand and production forecasts. One way we can maintain this is through our ABCQ segmentation strategy. For a client like this with tight production windows and lead times, it’s important that we have the material they need on short notice. This strategy allows us to hold the right inventory at the right time, utilize unused capacity during valleys in production, and taper off production when there are peaks.

On-Time Optimization

When we began working with the customer, they supplied the JBC team with a forecast of their material needs which ranged from 60 to 120 days. Knowing how important on-time deliveries were to the customer, Team JBC took a proactive approach to managing their orders based on their forecast. Collaborating closely with our key suppliers, we ordered materials based on forecasted demand and adjusted our logistics plan to ensure timely delivery. This has allowed us to prepare staffing and properly forecast our production to maintain high on-time delivery to this customer.

Manufacturing Excellence

Although most of the parts for this customer are made at our headquarters in North Ridgeville, some of the manufacturing is absorbed by JBC’s Denver, CO Center of Excellence for Aerospace and Energy Storage. Each of JBC’s four Centers of Excellence is home to a unique set of machinery and capabilities, each designed to support different stages of the design process. For example, the Denver facility employs the use of a dieless flash cutter to create small batches of stickers for rapid prototyping and providing initial quantities while tooling is still being created. This facility excels in quick prototyping while also maintaining the highest quality for each product. Each location serves as a different facet of our design process optimization, providing an important piece of the puzzle that ultimately supports the final product.

Accelerating Innovation

When the customer first came to us with a request to produce a complicated assembly comprised of a molded plastic part and a high-performance adhesive backed film, we quoted a 20-week lead time – most of which was tied up in acquiring the requisite assembly equipment. Yet, they gave us the go-ahead to begin production, just four weeks before the product was due to launch. We knew we had to pivot to eliminate the need for the long lead-time equipment if we were to meet their deadline. And that’s exactly what we did. Leveraging our process engineering expertise and vertically integrated manufacturing capabilities we not only delivered the parts on time, but we were also able to maintain the previously agreed upon cost structure.

The Result

Going above and beyond just supplying the necessary materials to the customer, JBC has become an external arm of this company's engineering, sourcing, and supply chain teams. We have integrated ourselves into the operations of the customer, serving as a responsive facet of multiple different departments. Throughout years of collaboration, the customer has come to rely on us to provide proof of concept through rapid prototyping, handle supply chain management, and provide engineered solutions to make their designs a reality.