down to a certain amount,” we can study it and maybe propose that we provide 80% of their annual tooling and therefore have the scale to automate the process. And we might tell them, “by the way, your tooling standards are waste- ful, you have homemade hardware that costs you a lot of money and adds no value, and tooling materi- als that are overspecified in these areas and underspecified in these areas. We can make tooling that lasts longer and costs less, but you need to work with us to revise your tooling standards.” In many cases, what makes the most sense is to develop an almost standard price model. With one customer, we have developed a price matrix. We don’t quote them. Once a year, we sit down and talk about prices and what they want for added features
and come up with a price. MCDP: Talk about the GM
partnership. Why have they been a
good partner for you? What
makes them unique? JM: I believe the strategic
partnership began with a GM need. They decided they needed to stay in the casting business. They discov- ered they didn’t have all the talent and facilities needed to do it. They determined we and our Alliance partners could help them. They gave us an opportunity to prove what we could do for them, and we proved we could do what they wanted in the way they wanted it. The engineering team at GM has worked in unison with our own manufacturing teams. We are growing together and devel- oping process understanding. The other key ingredient to our rela- tionship with GM is its purchasing group has grown to understand the mutual benefit to working together to help keep the casting arm of their business healthy and growing. They’ve allowed us to be something besides a commodity.
MCDP: You launched a new
business, Anderson Express, in early 2011 to serve small to medium-size
metalcasting facilities. Why? Betsy McIntyre: When I
came on board three years ago, one of my initiatives was to drive sales and marketing and evalu- ate new metalcasting facilities we can bring into Anderson Global. We found we couldn’t compete for smaller volumes of tooling and with smaller casting manufacturers at AG, but there was a demand from those growing businesses for a more sophisticated service with CAD engineering, for example. Ander- son Global could not do that and be price competitive. We evaluated where our growth and strengths were and realized we needed a separate entity to grow the
marketplace. MCDP: What are the needs of
that market segment? JM: Tey need competitively
Jul/Aug 2012 | METAL CASTING DESIGN & PURCHASING | 43
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