James Dawson – which provides engineered hose solutions – believes that increased collaboration between suppliers and OEMs is fundamental in increasing smarter innovation and developing a sustainable future for manufacturing.
James Dawson – whose Anchormajor customers include CAT, Cummins, Perkins, JCB and Agco – has come to this conclusion following the recent successful delivery of projects for major OEMs.
A push towards closer design integration and clearer communication with OEM customer engineering teams has eliminated the risk of errors in hose design, inefficiencies and productivity.
In turn, this improved collaboration with customers from the earliest possible stage in the design process has led to cost reductions, greater innovation, increased efficiency and, ultimately, optimal solutions.
Dave Cliff, applications engineering manager at James Dawson, said: “We’ve strategically made a concerted effort to improve lines of communication and collaboration between OEM customer engineering teams and our own – and the results have been revelatory.”
Historically, lack of line interaction with customer engineering teams has sometimes led to errors in hose design when downstream decisions were based on conflicting assumptions. This situation inevitably led to inefficiencies in the design process and loss of productivity.
Working directly with our major customers’ engineering teams from the start has eliminated this risk and has been an extremely productive way of driving greater innovation and creating much improved solutions.
Our customers have subsequently been quick to comment very positively on this new way of working and shown great enthusiasm for continuing in the same vein.”
The advent of new communication technology also means that design engineers can communicate effectively with one another regardless of whether they are in different parts of the globe.
