With four decades of metal processing under their belts, the experts at Press Room Equipment are well attuned to the ebbs and flows of the industry. Two current issues are reshoring, which has sparked a demand for labor, and the need to work with numerous companies, which can be frustratingly complex. Not to worry – Press Room Equipment has solutions.
Reshoring and a Renewed Labor Demand
Interestingly, some of the trends we’re currently seeing in the metal-processing industry stem from the early 2000s. For example, back then, many metal-stamping jobs and projects went overseas. Now, we’re starting to see those jobs and projects returning to the United States. In this way, the term “reshoring” is becoming a reality for many of our customers.
Production is going up, creating a need for more metal stamping. As our customers try to ramp up production to meet that need, their challenge is fulfilling the demand for high-quality labor. Currently many employees in certain positions, such as the operators running the stamping presses, are older folks who have been in the industry for most of their careers. Unfortunately, we’re not seeing many people in the younger generation step into these sorts of positions after college or high school. This has created an obstacle for many of our customers, which Press Room Equipment can sometimes solve through automation.
The Quest for a One-Stop Shop
When our customers tell us what they need to accomplish, they often lament that they need to work with three or four different companies to produce one line of products. For convenience, they would prefer to work with just one company. Press Room Equipment is often able to fulfill this role. For example, we’ve worked on projects where we help source the dye for our customer. Or if a customer is struggling to find a good source for the material for their production run, we can bring different companies together, acting as an integrator.
The way we approach working with our customers is to ask a lot of “what” and “why” questions. What issues are you having with your production processes? What is your biggest challenge? Why are these issues so important? As we talk through the customer’s processes, we may identify problems, such as a bottleneck within their production line. Or, we may use our extensive experience to fix the problem, taking a solution from a previous facility and applying it to the current situation. In other cases, an entirely new concept is required.
One of Press Room Equipment’s best assets is our talented engineering team, who can really work through these difficult problems and provide effective and efficient solutions. In many cases, we’re able to automate more processes for our customers, allowing them to move employees to parts of their plant that have greater labor needs.
Would you like to work with us? To get started, please call Press Room Equipment at 800-688-2645 or request a quote online.
