Cases In Point

 Recently, a customer asked Eck & Eck to bid on a troublesome part. It seems the part, an assembly welded from aluminum tubing, was leading to scrap-material rates in excess of 85%. Because of the necessary repetition of heat-treating after welding, tolerances were erratic as well. We reported to the customer that we could indeed make the part with significantly less scrap if the part were redesigned to be made from a hog out. With the new design in hand, we made a prototype for customer approval. Our results: the parts delivered back to the customer, on a tight deadline, exactly on spec, with scrap rates less than 1%. 

 A major aircraft company was building a part in-house from a forging with scrap rates routinely exceeding 50%. Eck & Eck was asked to bid the part on shop-overload. Eck sent back 10 parts for review, parts immediately proclaimed “the best iterations of this part ever made.” When the customer decided to go to permanent farm-out for the part, the bid went to another shop, a shop incapable of manufacturing this particular forged part, a shop owned by a friend of the Ecks who did not know that Eck & Eck had made the original parts. Consequently, this shop subcontracted the parts to other companies who quickly proved unequal to the task. And finally the customer decided that Eck & Eck, the provider of those 10 perfect review parts, should become the farm-out provider of record. The customer later accelerated the delivery schedule and at last was persuaded that Eck & Eck should deliver “the best parts ever made” directly. 

 An aircraft manufacturer wrote a dual-source contract with Eck & Eck and with another supplier for an axle assembly. The other shop’s parts were plagued by misalignments -- bolt-holes way off, keys 180° out of phase -- and missed deadlines. Meanwhile, with parts made by Eck & Eck also feeding the line, the buyer on this contract received a call from the manufacturing floor, a call demanding to know “Where’d you get these parts?” “Why?” asked the buyer. “What’s wrong?” “Nothing’s wrong,” came the reply. “The entire assembly just slips together. We’re not having to use hammers and rotary files to make everything fit.”

Still the other shop retained its contract, continuing to fall behind on deliveries, even of poorly made parts, until at last the manufacturer took the whole contract in house, Eck’s half as well . Three months later, the manufacturer called Eck & Eck again, admitting that the assembly was still badly behind schedule, asking that a sufficient number of parts be produced in 180 days to bring the line up to speed.

We worked around the clock.
And delivered the necessary parts back in 60 days.

In the initial certification process for AS9100 REV B:2004 and ISO9001 :2000, the third party auditors refuse to accept perfection. Zero-defects was just not a possibility. And so, in their initial audit of Eck & Eck; we achieved a 97% rating. Three minor findings found. A reputation of five decades made objective and verifiable.

Such numbers are comforting to customers coming to us for flight-critical parts. A near-perfect ISO score is a perfect beginning to a manufacturing relationship.