Leading U.S. Manufacturer Partners with Leonhardt for Contract Manufacturing Solution
A leading U.S. manufacturer of infrastructure and flow control products and services was looking to improve their product offering of residential meters for their utility customers. Their goal was to find a contract manufacturing solution that could take the product from design through production and final packaging. They identified that Leonhardt demonstrated the knowledge of diverse materials, manufacturing processes and cellular manufacturing necessary to take on the project.
The Challenge:
The water service company was struggling to coordinate the combination of materials and processes required to produce a new water meter with an antenna that increased both range and durability. The numerous manufacturing disciplines that had to be considered included:
- Plastic injection moldings
- Precision stampings
- Exotic materials
- Machining
- Robotic welding
- Packaging
- Prototype development
- Testing
The Solution:
With Leonhardt’s experience as a tier one supplier, the company was able to utilize both internal processes and supply base to develop a complete product shipped from the Hanover, Pennsylvania facility. Not only did Leonhardt manage the external suppliers, both the customer’s engineering lead and the RF engineering subcontractor reported through Leonhardt. As a contract manufacturer, Leonhardt knows how to take charge of a program and push it through the finish line.
The success of this project can be uniquely attributed to these factors:
- Early involvement in design support helped the water products customer develop a specific product.
- Leonhardt’s coordination of a variety of suppliers in multiple processes helped the team “design for manufacturability.”
- Leonhardt’s willingness to invest capital in a new dedicated robotic weld cell assured that the product was manufactured in a way that was globally competitive in both quality and cost.
Partnering with Leonhardt from design through to manufacturing launch reduced their supply base from a half dozen companies down to one. One company executive commented that it set a new paradigm for how products would be developed in the future.
With Leonhardt’s commitment and dedication to the project, the product met all the performance goals and there are now over 20,000 thousand of these meters in water pits all over the United States.