Value Engineering

The pressing need to reduce costs.

We often find many customers have existing components which continue to be made as cast or machined parts from very old original drawings.

It’s incredible that new parts for cutting edge applications in Automotive and Aerospace sectors may actually be assembled with other components first drawn over half a century earlier.

That’s why customers from every sector should know about our value engineering services.

It means, where feasible, Westley Engineering can convert existing components into pressed equivalents – making the most of each opportunity to achieve significant reductions in both weight and costs. Additional benefits to opting for pressed parts include substantially increased tool life and a more positive environmental impact.

The Benefits

No matter if you’re a Project Engineer or a Purchasing Manager - The advantages to be gained from this approach are numerous & make a compelling business case:

COSTS

Lower cost per volume, lower material costs due to less scrap and even transport costs are reduced as finished parts are lighter.

PRODUCTION RATES

Press parts can be made significantly faster than casting or machining. That’s manufacturing with production rates up to 500 parts per minute on some of our presses.

ENERGY & EFFICIENCY

Environmentally friendly - Press manufacturing can be up to 75% more energy efficient against that of the cast manufacturing process.

LABOUR

With pressing you may have the ability to produce a finished part which achieves the required tolerances, without further labour for additional operations.

TOOLING LIFE

Press tools can last 5 Million hits in comparison to cast which will last perhaps 100,000 shots before replacement or maintenance is required.

Company Case Study

THE PROJECT

When a customer brought us an example of their product that was causing a production bottleneck we took a long hard look.

The product was an electrical bracket and had been modified many times. Now it required 6 press tools to produce 3 component parts which then had to be welded together.

THE SOLUTION

We re-designed the bracket so that we could form it automatically from a single blank on a progression tool. This eliminated the welding operation entirely and resulted in a more accurate and consistent product.

As well as removing the Bottleneck, the pressing costs were reduced to a third of their previous level. Resulting in an annual saving of more than £20,000

Annual saving

£20,000

Reduction in costs

66%