Choosing a conveyor system manufacturer is no simple task, particularly when you&#;re under a deadline. This guide with questions to ask, along with common answers from both Glide-Line and our competitors, can help you in your decision-making process as you select a partner. Jump to these sections:
View Details
Lead Time Questions
Service Questions
Capabilities Questions
Cost Questions
Lead Time Questions
1. What are the manufacturer&#;s standard conveyor options?
Lead time will be greatly impacted by the number of standard versus custom conveyor parts you need in an applications system. If you need both short lead time and variations from the standard norms, look for a manufacturer with the greatest variety and flexibility in their standard conveyor system options.
2. What are the manufacturer&#;s lead times for standard conveyors?
Most conveyor systems manufacturers&#; lead times from order to delivery are 6 &#; 12 weeks. Sometimes this can be expedited in return for a hefty fee.
Partnering with a versatile conveyor systems manufacturer like Glide-Line will do the most to shorten your lead time. Glide-Line&#;s manufacturing process is built for quick lead times; we can ship conveyors in 2 to 3 weeks, and devices such as lifts, lift and transfers, lift and locate stations, and more in 4 to 6 weeks. This conveyor lead time is cut in half from other manufacturers and saves your client significant time and money.
3. What is the typical lead time for customized or altered conveyor elements?
If you can&#;t avoid customizations in your conveyor application, the next step is to seek a manufacturing partner able to deliver customized elements as quickly as possible. Better yet, seek a partner with configurable or alterable options; they&#;re faster than customizations.
For example, Glide-Line&#;s 360 series conveyor is built to be as flexible and configurable as possible - the most flexible conveyor on the market today. So, instead of customizing a conveyor from scratch to meet your client&#;s goal, you&#;re configuring a standard, which significantly cuts down on lead time.
Even if your unique application requires true customization, an experienced flexible conveyor manufacturer will have built their manufacturing process to be incredibly efficient, making for quick conveyor lead times even for truly customized conveyor solutions.
4. Is there something different in the company&#;s manufacturing process enabling them to produce engineered designs quicker than most?
You&#;ll be able to gauge a manufacturer&#;s ability to innovate with new solutions, new processes, and new customer-focused initiatives based partially on this response. A traditional company will simply speed up their current process to accommodate a shorter lead time request, often at the expense of your client (and possibly at the expense of attention to detail). However, an innovative company will employ a more efficient conveyor manufacturing process to address this frequent concern of applications engineers.
Glide-Line, for example, has designed their manufacturing process for conveyor systems around customers&#; desires for a shorter lead time, effectively cutting lead times in half for all standard and configured orders.
5. Can the company expedite materials if needed?
For some manufacturers, this answer will be &#;yes&#;. But, your follow-up question should be, &#;At what cost?&#; Paying twice as much for expedited delivery may not be worth it to your customer. Instead, look for a conveyor manufacturer with limited cost increases for shortened lead times to minimize the impact to your customer&#;s bottom line and increase overall ROI of the conveyor system.
Service Questions
Joyroll Product Page
6. How easy is it to maintain the conveyor belt?
Your client&#;s maintenance team will appreciate attention paid to the work they do, and how easy it will be to accomplish any maintenance on the conveyor. Easy maintenance impacts your client&#;s throughput and RO and improves positive employee relationships because their priorities were considered in the process.
Glide-Line&#;s belts can be removed from the top of the conveyor, meaning they&#;re generally easier to access than most other conveyor belts. Plus, we ship our belts endless, so they don&#;t have to be spliced on site by the customer. Since splicing requires special training, a special tool, and a lot more time, changing a Glide Line belt is significantly quicker and easier.
7. How does service take place?
Service on your client&#;s conveyors can be provided by both internal and external sources, depending on their current set-up. However, it&#;s important for your conveyor manufacturer to also provide service and support when the need arises. More important still is the speed at which that service is provided, and in what format. The goal is to minimize downtime.
8. Is the manufacturer responsive to inquiries, requests, and service requirements?
A responsive manufacturer shows collaborative quality in their observable actions. Plus, it&#;s obvious a highly responsive manufacturer will be more responsive throughout the terms of the business transaction, making for an overall smoother experience. When your lead time is already short, you can&#;t afford to wait around for responses from a manufacturer who may not have the answers you&#;re looking for.
Capabilities Questions
9. What are the manufacturer&#;s standard conveyor options?
Lead time will be greatly impacted by the number of standard versus custom conveyor parts you need in an applications system. If you require both short lead time and variations from the standard norms, look for a manufacturer with the greatest variety and flexibility in their standard conveyor system options.
10. Which type of conveyor and controls will be the most productive for the materials I need conveyed?
This will depend on your specific situation. Your goal should be to find a collaborative conveyor manufacturer capable of delivering thought-provoking and unique solutions when necessary. Our recent post &#;Unique Assembly Conveyor Layouts and The Best Applications&#; gives examples of the most flexible and productive conveyor layouts we&#;ve designed for some of our clients&#; most challenging applications.
Cost Questions
11. How should I calculate the ROI of my conveyor?
The return on investment of your conveyor or conveyor system can be measured via its throughput, energy costs/savings, and time cost/savings for manufacturing, operation, and maintenance.
Ideally, you can get a quote instantly using an in-context configurator, IMPACT! from Glide-Line. With a traditional configurator, calculating the cost of your multi-strand conveyor system frequently necessitates a discussion with the manufacturer&#;s sales representative. It could take hours or even days to receive pricing, and every time there&#;s a change to the system, there&#;s a change to the price. With an in-context configurator as your conveyor design software, all the system calculations are instant, available to you the moment you make the change. You&#;re able to find and quote pricing on your own, without waiting for a salesperson. IMPACT! is Excel-based, so it&#;s easy to learn, and it can even drive models in SOLIDWORKS automatically.
Armed with these answers, now you can more easily compare competitive conveyor manufacturers and choose a partner that best fits your client&#;s needs. Learn more in our ebook, How to Cut Conveyor System Lead Time in Half.
Conveyor belt related questions and a little advice
I hope to be able to modify and redo the current conveyor belt so that it can meet and branch. As the days go by, the product demand is more and more complex, need to use more kinds and quantities of tool table, simple manual handling has become an obstacle to the improvement of production efficiency.
The conveyor belt is designed to solve this problem. It was out of my love for automated assembly lines that I decided to get the game after the demo and have been looking forward to its official release since the end of February. And after more than 10 hours after the sale failed several archive finally insisted that the conveyor belt can be arranged. But this conveyor belt gave me a terrible gaming experience.
The above are some of my complaints, now about my problems in the game.
After the product requirements are upgraded, in order to maximize the utilization of the tool table and reduce the cost, my design drawings may contain parts developed in the early stage, which leads to the fact that some parts I produce are not only used in advanced parts, but also assembled into finished products. Before the requirements of level 4 products, the size of the initial workshop can barely meet my demand for the number of tool sets.
However, when it comes to the demand of level 4 and level 5 products, I need about 10 tool tables to produce level 5 products, and then I need to add the type and place of the container. The operation would have been satisfactory if I had been working on a single assembly table, but this would have led me to produce far less than the maximum allowed weekly sales volume, which gave me a sense of frustration.
Originally, the emergence of timing belt conveyor belt can improve the transport rate of semi-finished products and greatly improve the production efficiency. But after the actual use, but found that the conveyor belt does not bring any help.
My realistic requirement is that a semi-finished part is provided to several tool sets. However, advanced components require more than one component. It may require other semi-finished parts and raw materials, which are sent to other places to make other semi-finished parts. The logistics system involved in this is extremely complex.
However, the conveyor belts cannot meet and are only allowed to pass from the first end of a conveyor belt to the end of a conveyor belt. However, its placement occupies space and volume and prevents people from moving. Therefore, I feel that the existing conveyor belt not only cannot bring about the optimization of logistics, but its layout will also destroy the normal logistics operation. But the constant pressure from the escalating demand for the product added up to make me lose interest in the game. I probably won't touch the game again until the logistics problem improves.
By the way, the design. As the product was updated, I designed a new design drawing, but I tried to delete the old design drawing, but I couldn't, which caused me trouble in naming the new design drawing.
Ah, I would like to ask the following game development on the specific schedule. I don't want to "wish him a long life" like riding next door and slashing 2. It's just a little joke.
Sorry, my English vocabulary is a little poor, the article is translated into English by software, so some words may not be clear.
The company is the world’s best Conveyor Components supplier. We are your one-stop shop for all needs. Our staff are highly-specialized and will help you find the product you need.