I am a new hire here at Field and have had the privilege of getting to see how stuff is done around here. I’ve been impressed by a lot at Field, but our engineering department has wowed me the most. It’s because of them that in 2014 we were able to take on 387 engineering projects and submit $2.1 million in cost savings to our customers (and that is not pocket change). The inevitable question then is how our engineering department found that much money to save just in fasteners or fastening methods.
It turns out that our engineering department team members are more than just hard workers; they’re experts in the science of fastening. Through them, we offer additional areas of value-added engineering technical support ranging from technical line reviews to training programs. When we do a technical line review, our engineers come in to the customer’s facility and watch the assembly process from start to finish looking for any possible ways to save money. We’ve found improvements in assembly techniques, fastener type and usage, ergonomics, and a dozen other things that help cut costs for customers and improve their products.
We want our customers to be saving money in every step of their assembly process, so the old adage “Give a man a fish, feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime” absolutely comes into play through our training programs. When we do training programs with customers, we go to the customer’s facility, buy the team lunch, and then train them on fasteners and/or fastening techniques. According to a survey from Product Design for Manufacture and Assembly[1], most engineers only know about 20% of what they need to about fasteners, so we take it upon ourselves to train our customers so they can learn how to best fasten and construct their products. We’ve helped customers improve their design process, torque tension, fastening techniques, and a dozen other things through our training programs.
We know that customers are busy with a thousand different things on any given day and testing their fasteners is another thing that tends to get pushed to the side, but we want to save them money so we go digging and get our hands dirty to find the cost savings.
“The Field engineering department has a wealth of technical knowledge to offer. Utilizing years of practical hands on application experience to help solve problems and reduce costs for our customers. Our data driven approach and problem solving philosophy is what allows us to be the industry leader in cost savings through technical support.” – Eric Schachte, Applications Engineer
We’re committed to cost savings here and in my opinion, our engineering department is knocking it out of the park for customers left and right. We offer value-added technical support through a number of different projects that we take on. Ultimately, through all of these projects and trainings, we want to be your fastener engineering department and do all we can to cut costs year over year for our customers.
Author: Tyler Smith, Marketing Intern
[1] Geoffrey Boothroyd, Peter Dewhurst, and Vinston A. Knight, Product Design for Manufacture and Assembly (CRC Press, 2010), 30.