Supply Solution for High-Demand Reflective Tape

Background

A company known for its comprehensive turnkey pallet racking storage solutions found itself in a time-sensitive supply chain bind during a large installation job. The company uses 3M reflective tape in its automated storage and retrieval systems as part of its assembly. This reflective tape serves as a visual marker that can be detected by system sensors in the retrieval robotics. The tape also aids in safety and compliance by making hazards more visible. Despite never having worked with PGC before, this new customer was confident that we would be the right company to help find the solution.  

Challenge

In the middle of the project, the racking company realized its existing source would not be able to meet its demand for supplying their need of 3M reflective tape. Typically, they used a small distributor for small quantity orders and proceeded by cutting the reflective tape manually with scissors at each installation job site. Due to protection and regulation changes, the company was required to incorporate a much higher quantity of reflective tape pieces on each new racking system. With this drastic increase in the required quantity and the company's inability to automate cut-to-length parts in-house, they contacted PGC. Recognizing the urgency of the situation, PGC's team immediately sprang into action to find a solution. 

Solution

With a pressing need to receive 11,000 parts within a month of placing the PO, our team got started. As a trusted 3M Preferred Converter, we already had the required 3M 3000X Sensing Film tape stocked for several other PGC customers, putting us in a strong position to support this new customer. Our application engineers swiftly identified the most efficient way to cut parts to length with our different equipment, landing on our rotary die cutter. The manufacturing team then reviewed our factory schedule to ensure we could accommodate the customer's fast-approaching deadline for their installation. 

Not only was it essential that our team move efficiently on the engineering and production end, but being this was a brand new customer to PGC, our account management team needed to receive front-end account information such as finance, billing, and so on can sometimes be a long process efficiently. When setting up a new customer, this information is needed before an order can be placed on the factory schedule. Therefore, this work must be done quickly and correctly to help achieve customer deadlines.

Results

PGC promptly sampled the cut-to-length parts of 3M reflective tape and sent them off with a quote with pricing and estimated lead time. The new customer was not just satisfied, but pleased with the pricing and sample. They immediately submitted a PO, and the 11,000 parts were shipped out less than two weeks later. PGC not only met but exceeded customer expectations