In-House Assembly Services

Customer:
Medical equipment manufacturer

Background:
A few years ago, one of our longtime medical equipment manufacturer customers wanted to save on expenses for third-party assembly. At the time, Kent Elastomer Products did not offer assembly services.

Challenge:
KEP met the challenge – but not without facing obstacles and creating solutions. To add and perfect assembly processes at our Winesburg facility to meet our customers’ needs, we thoroughly designed what the process would look like, purchased an assembly machine, and perfected the hand assembly.

However, implementing our assembly process wasn’t simple. After starting assembly operations for this product, we found that components were snapping in half after assembly. We went back to the drawing board to find the right solution.

KEP conducted research and trials to explore possible causes for the breaking. We found that parts which were assembled with the tube snugly against the component in the product were more likely to break.

Solution:
KEP implemented controls in assembly so that tubes are placed onto the components within a more limited range – eliminating the condition for breakage. This was not only the right solution for our customer, but it also helped to correct one specific step of our assembly.

Summary:
Helping our customers’ with value-added services isn’t alway easy. It often begins with new challenges and requires innovations that we had not considered. But in the end, we apply creative problem solving to the challenge and the result is often better and more efficient than we first imagined. This is what helps KEP continually grow and adapt, helping our customers solves specific problems and expanding our own capabilities.