Driving Throughput: Vertical Integration

What is Vertical Integration?

A vertically integrated supplier manages the entire process of manufacturing a product, from sourcing the raw materials through selling to a customer, including designing, engineering testing, and producing.

Having a vertically integrated supplier means you will spend less time integrating components yourself. You can ensure that the consumables run smoothly on the machines and in case of breakdowns, you have one point of contact available to help you resolve issues.

Boost Throughput With a Vertical Integration

Operations managers are constantly exploring ways to raise their throughput rate. Features like printer integration and packer-centric design can be crucial to getting the most output from automated bagging equipment.Few manufacturers in the automated mailing and bagging sector are vertically integrated, so it stands to reason why the term and its standout benefits might not be familiar to you. Let’s dive in and discuss what it means and more importantly, explore the benefits of working with an automated mailer and bagger that is vertically integrated.

Accountability – Faster Reaction and Resolution

Have you ever had an issue arise and each supplier you contact points its finger at another until you’ve gone down an exhausting rabbit hole trying to fix a single issue? Rather than having a situation quickly resolved, your time is spent calling different suppliers, explaining the challenge, and getting passed off to another contact.  Worst case scenario, you hit a brick wall where your supplier tells you they can’t help because they buy their products from multitudes of primary vendors and they aren’t sure who can help. It’s not an ideal scenario for keeping your output at optimal levels.

With a vertically integrated supplier, the time-consuming process of finding the root cause of the problem is minimised. Vertically integrated suppliers are responsible for the entire end-to-end process, meaning they have the quality assurance processes and expertise to know where to look in their manufacturing processes to identify where your issue originated and what needs to happen to get your fulfillment processes back up and running.  

Imagine this scenario. You’ve purchased a new piece of fulfillment equipment that has been working flawlessly with poly mailers helping your throughput keep up with the high volume of peak season. Suddenly, while loading a new job and a new set of fan-folded bags, the machine is faulting out. You’re not quite sure if it’s a setting on the machine, if there’s something off about the new set of mailers or if something has gone wrong with the machine itself. Luckily, you’ve bought the bagging machine from a vertically integrated supplier and a single phone call with their team helps you to identify the exact issue and solve it over the phone in minutes. Your processes have only been down for a few minutes and you’re already back up and running, keeping peak season packaging flowing out the door as scheduled. 

The Pros of a Single Supplier  

It’s not just the bagging equipment where you’ll benefit from a vertically integrated supplier, though. The benefit you can receive from using a supplier that owns the manufacturing of both your equipment and the consumable runs on it is multiplied tenfold.

It means that the equipment that you’ve purchased has been carefully engineered to run with the bags or mailers you are using. It also means that the bags you’ve bought were formulated and converted to be a perfect match for the equipment. You won’t run into the quality issues that arise from using sub-par poly products from overseas on A+ equipment because the engineering teams that designed the equipment were working closely with the engineering teams developing the film that you’re purchasing.

Faster Lead Times, Affordable Pricing

Finally, choosing to work with a vertically integrated supplier has several smaller advantages to keeping your throughput at an all-time high.

The buying power of a company that is mass producing across the entire spectrum of their product portfolio positions them to secure better pricing which is then passed on to the customer. Not only that but it helps them to shorten lead times meaning less time to get your operations up and moving.

Are you interested in learning how your operational throughput can increase by partnering with a vertically integrated company? We’re eager to answer your questions and discuss the benefits specific to your company.