Building Relationships for Better Precision Parts and a Strong Manufacturing Supply Chain

Relationships are one of the key pillars of our business at Athena Manufacturing. But building a good relationship doesn’t happen overnight. With frequent phone calls, regular emails, repeated transactions, and face-to-face interaction, we can learn more about the person and company we’re working with and begin to build trust.

It’s that concept there — trust — that’s indispensable within the manufacturing industry. Our customers trust us to manufacture quality parts and deliver them on time. And to do that, we need to trust our vendors. That means building a strong relationship where we can trust one another to always do what we say we will.

So, when we say that we treat our vendors the same way we treat our customers, we mean it. We want to earn that level of trust in each other and develop long-term partnerships that will enable us to deliver the quality parts our customers expect time and time again. While this requires putting in the work and going the extra mile for each other, the rewards of a strong relationship pay off for everyone. That’s why many of our vendors have been working with Athena Manufacturing over the long haul, some even since we first started out in precision machining and manufacturing 24 years ago. They trust us, and we trust them — and our customers know that if we trust our vendors and suppliers, they can too.

That’s just good business all around.

Working with Vendors We Trust to Create a Reliable Manufacturing Supply Chain

Something we’ve learned at Athena Manufacturing — and a key element to our strategy — is that being able to predictively manage our supply chain deepens the relationship we have with our suppliers. With customers that depend on our contract manufacturing services for critical parts and components, ensuring a robust and reliable manufacturing supply chain is not only essential for us, it’s imperative for them. 

With that in mind, when sourcing cost-buy items, external services, and raw materials, we always look first to our suppliers with whom we have long relationships, who’ve established trust, and who continually offer competitive prices, even if they’re not the lowest. Though that might seem counterintuitive when it comes to maximizing profits, after 24 years, we know that quality and reliability are truly what matter most to our customers and, by extension, to us.

Enabling Efficient Integrated Manufacturing Through Supply Chain Transparency

While many customers come to Athena Manufacturing for our precision machining services and custom metal fabrication capabilities, we’ve also grown our services to encompass higher-level integrated manufacturing. This has required us to further expand and strengthen our manufacturing supply chain. 

Integrated manufacturing requires carrying a greater number and variety of externally sourced parts in our inventory, as well as bringing on new vendors to meet customer needs. To ensure our customers always receive their orders on time, we’ve collaborated with our existing suppliers and built relationships with new vendors. This involved setting up an inventory management system where Athena and our vendors hold inventory. 

In addition to this, we’ve worked to create transparency throughout our manufacturing supply chain, providing our vendors with demand forecasts for the products we’re contracted to manufacture that they supply parts for. This allows our vendors to know which parts we will need well in advance and create more efficient production schedules while enabling our team to mitigate potential supply chain disruptions and ensure on-time delivery for our customers.

Measuring Vendor Performance to Ensure Quality

Part of ensuring that our manufacturing supply chain continues to remain strong involves monitoring and measuring our vendor performance. This is also a requirement of our AS9100D certification, which enables us to provide contract manufacturing services for customers within the aerospace and defense industries.

As part of vendor performance management, we issue each of our vendors regular report cards that, among other things, provide reporting about on-time delivery and product quality. In addition to this, we’ve also created improvement programs to elevate our suppliers’ performance. With clear expectations, along with measurable and achievable goals, all of our vendors have the opportunity to grow and become reliable, long-term partners. After all, what we want from our vendors is for them to succeed. Because if they succeed, so do our customers, and so does the whole team at Athena Manufacturing.

How a Strong Manufacturing Supply Chain Benefits Our Customers

Within manufacturing, the definition of quality is meeting the customer’s requirements. And we commit to quality with every order. We recognize the importance of ensuring quality in everything we buy and every outside service we contract. In the end, we’re the ones responsible for delivering for our customers and ensuring that the parts and products we manufacture live up to expectations. 

Because of the relationships we’ve worked hard to build over the past 24 years and careful selection of our suppliers, we’ve developed a strong and reliable manufacturing supply chain that has allowed us to grow our precision CNC machining and custom metal fabrication capabilities to serve our customers' unique requirements.

So, if you’re seeking a precision machining and manufacturing partner who will work to build a relationship with you and gain your trust, reach out to us and request a quote today. We guarantee quality in the parts we manufacture and the service we provide, and we do what it takes to grow your trust in us at Athena Manufacturing.