How VMI is dealing with supply-chain pressures

With shortages of components and other supply-chain pressures still impacting the industry, Harm Voortman, president & CEO of VMI explains here how the Dutch-based tire & rubber machinery maker is managing these issues:

Epe, The Netherlands - VMI Group, like many other machine manufacturers in the industry, suffered from shortage of components. At the end of 2020, early 2021, we already had indications that supply of certain components might become a problem.

Combined with the fact that we achieved record levels in order intake, it was clear to us that we had to react swiftly. Therefore, we ordered a lot of components upfront and very early and used this to build up our stock levels.

This helped us to get pretty well through what we now see as phase 1 of the supply chain disruptions. When it became apparent that the shortages of components increased, our stock levels decreased and our order intake further grew, we entered into phase 2.

During this phase we made sure to maintain efficiency and flow in our increased production levels by using ‘test kits‘. These were made up of scarce components and after finishing complete machines and thorough testing, we took these components out and used them for the next machine in production.

The now incomplete machine was in the majority of the cases sent to the customer’s site and installed as far as possible.

Obviously, you can only do this in close cooperation with your customer. When the missing components were delivered to VMI we finished the installation of the machine on site. In this way, the delay for the customer was minimised and sometimes even nil.

To continue reading see the full report in the January/February issue of European Rubber Journal magazine – online version also available in the Featured Content section under the Focus tab on the ERJ website homepage.