Is Vertically Integrated Manufacturing a Bad Idea?

We champion the principles of vertical integration and have worked hard to integrate many capabilities in our precision machine shop. And yet we recognize that we simply can’t perform all of the services our customers require equally well, like anodizing or black oxide.

Fortunately, we have a wide network of vendors we know and trust to perform various services exceptionally well. We work with these vendors regularly behind the scenes, leveraging our project management skills to provide our customers with a frictionless experience. 

Services Arbiser Machine Outsources to Vendors

We excel at capabilities such as CNC milling, waterjet cutting, and wire EDM, so we offer these and several other services in-house. When a customer needs a part that requires more than one of these capabilities, we can streamline the entire manufacturing process by performing all operations under one roof.

We’ve worked hard to hone our expertise in the capabilities we offer. . . but we’re not too proud to admit that not every capability is our specialty. When it comes to certain secondary and finishing operations, our trusted vendors deliver better results than we ever could.

How do we know? Because we have a rigorous vetting process for every vendor we work with. Before entrusting a shop with our customers’ parts, the shop must meet our stringent criteria for excellent work and reliability, as well as demonstrate proof of regular audits. 

Services we outsource include:

• Anodizing

• Black manganese phosphate coating

• Heat treating

• Laser welding

• Passivation

• Plating

Like the capabilities we’ve mastered, these services require dedicated training and highly specialized equipment. There are vendors in our network who excel in each of these areas, and we have the utmost confidence that they’ll meet and exceed our customers’ expectations. 

Project Management Ensures a Seamless Workflow

Many precision machine shops haven’t put in the work to develop a robust network of vendors and outsource various operations on behalf of their customers. They’ll machine a customer’s parts, then send the parts back to the customer to handle the logistics of finishing processes like anodizing or heat treating. 

In fact, our principal engineer, Brandon, experienced this headache firsthand in one of his previous roles on the customer side. He vividly remembers how frustrating it was working with shops that didn’t manage secondary processes for their customers. Even the seemingly simple task of getting a UPS label printed to send machined parts to a different vendor for heat treating can be unbelievably cumbersome to an engineer. 

At Arbiser Machine, we’re happy to manage every aspect of your project for you—including any outsourced processes that we don’t provide in-house. 

Here are some direct ways you benefit from us project managing outside services: 

• Guaranteed quality. We’ve already done the work to vet our vendors—now you get to reap the benefits of their top-quality services. 
  
  

• Time savings. Spend less time shuttling your parts around from one location to the next and more time on high-value aspects of your job.
  
  

• Vendor consolidation. Limited to a certain number of vendors? Working with us keeps your vendor count low. In some cases, vendors will only work directly with other shops like ours in the first place.

If you’re ready to experience the Arbiser Machine difference, request a quote today!