How You Benefit from Your Precision Machine Shop’s Vendor Relationships

We encourage all manufacturing customers who need parts made on a consistent basis to develop a strong relationship with a trusted precision machining partner. These mutually beneficial partnerships are critical to manufacturing success, ensuring there’s a team of experts in your corner to help you overcome inevitable challenges that arise. 

In fact, one of the reasons we give our customers this advice is because we’ve seen firsthand how useful it is when we’re on the customer side of a relationship working with outside vendors. 

We put in the effort to develop positive relationships with our vendors, and the benefits trickle all the way back down to our customers. It’s just one more way we ensure unparalleled service.

How Our Vendor Relationships Benefit Our Customers

Although we offer a wide range of services in-house, we still rely on a network of well-vetted vendors so that we can manage our customers’ projects from beginning to end. If you’ve come to us to have your parts made under one roof, you’ve likely benefited from our relationships with trusted vendors without even knowing it. 

For instance, if a part needs to be anodized post-machining, we request a quote from our anodizing vendor, wait for a response, and then send them the parts for completion. We manage this process behind the scenes so our customers can be entirely hands-off. 

The additional steps inevitably add to a project’s lead time, which we account for in our initial communications with customers. However, there are times when customers are in a pinch and need their parts quickly. In these cases, we can leverage the solid relationships we’ve built with our vendors to move their project along faster. 

How We Maintain Positive Vendor Relationships

As experienced precision machining specialists, we understand the challenges of making and selling high-quality parts. Manufacturing is a fast-paced and demanding industry—which is part of why we love it! But given the nature of our industry, a little kindness goes a long way. 

Here’s how we maintain positive relationships with our vendors: 

We don’t nickel and dime them

When our vendors set a price, we don’t ask for discounts. More importantly, we recognize the value of their work and won’t take our business elsewhere just because we can get the same services for a small discount from another vendor. 

The quality of the work our vendors produce and the relationships we’ve built with them are far more important than saving a few dollars. 

This attitude establishes trust between them and us, so they know that when we submit an RFQ, it’s worth their time to get back to us. If they put in the effort to send us a quote, we’ll work to give them our business. 

We respect their business

There are plenty of ways to show respect in a business transaction. At Arbiser Machine, we respect our vendors by always paying on time, being reasonable about deliverable dates, and treating their employees with kindness. 

Our vendors know that we won’t waste their time and that working with us will be a pleasant experience all around. 

Customer Example: Emergency Work Ahead of a Holiday Weekend​

We recently leveraged a vendor relationship to help a customer get their parts quickly ahead of a holiday weekend. 

The customer came to us on a Tuesday with an emergency job. We were able to machine all the parts by EOD Wednesday, and we brought them to our anodizer on Thursday morning. 

Memorial Day Weekend was coming up, and we knew the anodizer would be closed on Monday. We assumed we wouldn’t get the parts back until the following Wednesday. Nonetheless, we asked them if they could prioritize this project for us. 

The vendor called us later that afternoon to inform us that they had finished the parts and that we could come to pick them up. We got the parts, completed our inspection Friday morning, and delivered them to the customer by Friday afternoon.

We were thrilled to provide a timely solution for our customer, and they were relieved to get the parts they needed so quickly. We got an email from the customer expressing their gratitude: 

“Every time we run into an urgent issue, Arbiser Machine is there to do everything they can to help us out. You have a great team that is always willing to help us find a solution. Please pass along to your team how appreciative we are for their efforts.”

Good relationships make a difference in the manufacturing world. Request a quote from our precision machine shop and see for yourself.