Peerless maintains its strongest market hold in professional settings, such as hotels. About 30-35% of its mount- ing assemblies (like the one pictured above) are aluminum die castings.


duties, barriers to in- ternational shipping (Mexico, for example, applies a 20% duty to parts made in China), freight, and additional office personnel to manage the outsourced inventory, purchase orders and accounting. “China is inexpen-


sive, but the logistics add cost,” Potts said. “Everything has to be managed lo- gistically. Then there are the quality issues. When an issue arises here, you oversee the entire process.” In particular, Peerless early on discov-


ered that the quality of the fasteners it received from Asia was below par. Those components are critical in holding the company’s mounts to the wall or other stationary objects. When Peerless tried to find a new supplier of the fasteners, the change was difficult due to the span of distance, culture and language. “Any change takes a long time,” Eble said.


MODERN CASTING / February 2011 Because of its position in the pro-


fessional market, Peerless has also spurned low cost countries because of their propensity to knock off products, a problem that is rampant for its retail- focused competitors. “You have a better ability to pro-


tect your intellectual property when you manufacture the parts in-house,” Potts said.


Launching the Program It was when Peerless first had the


inkling it could produce the parts it was buying from Asia economically


in-house that Dolack got the phone call he supposed was a prank. The first step, the company decid-


ed, was to bring in a consultant with diecasting experience to determine for sure the idea was a financially sound one.


Dolack became that consultant. “First thing, I reviewed all the cast-


ings to determine cycle times and processes,” he said. “We looked at all the prints, and there were similar cast- ings that I was able to compare and analyze to figure out how we would build them.”


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