Active shooter? Employee injury? Facility disaster? Whether it is a disgruntled employee or a natural disaster, a crisis can happen to the best of companies. Definition of a Crisis A crisis is an unexpected or unanticipated situation that has the potential to have a real or perceived negative impact on the reputation of a company and its brand. A crisis can be large or small. It can...
OEMs are wise to consider their entire product development needs, including the manufacturing requirements, before deciding where to do the work—internally or externally. Whether you manufacture your product components in-house or you outsource to a manufacturing supplier, consider which option would have the biggest impact on your organization’s vision and goals. The following...
A product-manufacturing path seldom travels in a straight line. Instead, it can resemble our childhood games like Candy Land with a winding track or Chutes and Ladders with tracks all over the place. The path typically consists of more than one manufacturing process, with different tasks for each process. Individuals working in separate manufacturing areas performing different tasks...
In a previous customer newsletter, we shared information with you about the five things your annual forecast influences regarding Alexandria Industries. It is one of the most crucial pieces of information we need from you. Customer forecasts drive our business planning for the year. This includes planning our production capacity, capital investments, operational changes, raw material...
Sixty percent of manufacturers use a basic (and flawed) cost model to determine the costs to offshore their product manufacturing needs. They base decisions to do business in other countries on: Wage arbitrage – Countries where there is an abundance of labor and the cost of doing business is lower than in the United States. Purchase price variance (PPV) – A procurement...
With the combination of 5.8 million job openings and a 4.1 percent unemployment rate, many companies are upping their anti when it comes to recruiting employees – especially skilled ones. To grow, smart companies know they need creative recruitment strategies to attract new employees. Spending time, money and effort on finding the right employees can be worthwhile. That is, unless...
When seeking a manufacturing partner, choose one who is open to doing things differently, a supplier who boosts your competitiveness and your bottom line. We recently received a prospective business opportunity to work with an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) on a newly developed product. Our collective goal was getting to a lower price-point, with higher volumes. We needed to...
Did you know that Alexandria Industries does not have customer service people? What!? Who’s Lavern or Shirley then? Joking aside, the people at Alexandria Industries responsible for daily communication with customers are part of our manufacturing support team. These account specialists do much more than customer service. They are responsible for managing and serving our customer...
Every day that goes by at Alexandria Industries, we look for opportunities to lead the way in our industry. This happens in every area in our organization. Whether we are researching the latest equipment technology to measure the strength of an aluminum-extruded product, or taking time to learn about disaster preparedness techniques, we set our sights on continuous growth to get us...
When the quality of aluminum extruded products go awry, customer satisfaction plummets. Recently, we recognized we were struggling with surface-finish defects on a customer’s product based on the number of returns. These returns were frustrating our customer and eating away any profit. Addressing the problem head-on was critical to improving customer satisfaction, and ultimately,...
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