Enable Manufacturing partners with DiManEx
Keeping physical inventory in warehouses is an expensive undertaking. To provide clients with short lead-times, it has been a standard business practice to hold several months of stock based on historic sales and sales forecast. Theoretically, this is a sensible thing to do but in reality, we cannot predict the future and our forecasting for inventory holdings is not 100% accurate. This can lead to excess inventory or more expensive panic buying of parts that are out of stock, both heavily weighing on companies’ balance sheets. But even the day to day inventory holdings tie up a significant amount of cash that companies could put to much better use. Let’s imagine a company holds 3 months stock of 1000 parts, each costing £10. This amounts to a total of £30,000 of cash that is permanently tied up and not working for the business.
But we might just be in luck as there is a new solution to this problem: digital manufacturing. What if parts could be ordered on demand in small quantities, such as twos or threes, and there would be no need to tie up cash in inventory holdings? This sounds too good to be true but technology company DiManEx has set out to solving this problem once and for all.
Based in the Netherlands, DiManEx’s mission is to digitalise manufacturing supply chains the same way e-commerce has transformed retail. To do this, DiManEx provides a digital platform for end users (manufacturing businesses) and suppliers (businesses specialising in Additive Manufacturing). Its end-to-end cloud-based platform will then match the right additive manufacturing supplier to a specific part, that can then be printed on demand. This supply chain digitalisation will keep inventory levels low and cash flows healthy. It also enables manufacturing businesses to produce parts locally, just in time, reducing delivery times and carbon emissions to a minimum.
At the core of DiManEx’s proposition and business model, is the ability of its partners to manufacture parts with Additive Manufacturing (AM). No other manufacturing method would have been suitable for DiManEx’s supply-on-demand strategy of a small number of parts. However, there are still many shortcomings with Additive Manufacturing that need to be overcome for DiManEx to increase the number of parts it can source digitally. The drawbacks of Additive Manufacturing today often revolve around size, material and quality which in turn prevents DiManEx from offering certain parts via its AM service providers. Until now!
In September 2020, Enable Manufacturing, who specialises in Additive Casting, will join the Additive Manufacturing partner pool of DiManEx. With the Additive Casting process, moulds are produced via Additive Manufacturing and then used in the foundry to cast a final part. Main advantages of this production method include the availability of up to 130 approved metals, the ability to also manufacture large parts and enhancements in quality which goes hand-in-hand with the metal choices at disposal.
Adding Enable Manufacturing to the fold will help DiManEx to overcome the current barriers of AM and increase the amount of parts it can now offer via its online platform. ‘Whilst the industry is working on overcoming barriers such as size, material, quality and cost, Additive Casting offers the best of both worlds, enabling manufacturing businesses to change the way they make parts not tomorrow, but today. Therefore, it was key to DiManEx to have Enable on board to increase the amount of parts we could deliver through our platform.’ Tibor van Melsem Kocsis, CEO at DiManEx.
When Enable investigated the potential of Additive Casting on the DiManEx platform, it became apparent that for one client with 14,000 parts on the platform, for instance, there was an Additive Manufacturing solution for only 70 parts or 0.5%. When using Enable’s Additive Casting process, this number would increase to 3500 parts or 25% that could then be delivered via the DiManEx platform. ‘Additive Casting is an innovative process that fills the gap between traditional manufacturing and digital Additive Manufacturing solutions. We are very excited about the collaboration with DiManEx which will undoubtedly become central to our growth strategy.’ Phil Kilburn, Sales Director at Enable.
Editors notes:
About Enable
Founded in 2019, Enable is a UK based business that specialises in additive manufacturing. Including the manufacturing of moulds for metal casting to produce high quality metal production parts without the limitations of traditional tooling. This method is called Additive Casting and bridges the gap between direct 3D metal printing and traditional metal casting. For more information visit www.enable.parts
For more information, please contact our office:
+44 (0) 3333 05 09 04
office@enable.parts
