John Deere has been manufacturing a large-diameter clamp used in tractor exhaust systems for years. The piece sells consistently and is strong within the company’s product portfolio. However, when John Deere was interested in saving money in the production process, they knew they’d have to change the part’s design, work with a different supplier, or both.
KMC answered a request for quote (RFQ) to manufacture the clamp in a more cost-effective manner. We engaged in our standard prototyping process, which is a collaborative effort between KMC engineers and the customer’s engineers. The KMC engineers working on this RFQ had experience building tools for tractor applications, so they took their understanding of the part’s overall function and drove through the KMC process to make manufacturing repeatable and efficient.
Leveraging experience to develop new solutions
We quickly developed a design alternative and with a preliminary quote that proved the design would provide a significant cost reduction. Then we prototyped the design, tested it, made adjustments based on John Deere’s feedback, created another prototype, and finally received the purchase order to begin production.