And big customers can be fickle. Eight years ago, Gent landed a contract to supply fasteners used to put together battery packs for Tesla Inc - and the electric-car maker soon became its largest customer. But Gent never got assurances from Tesla that the business would continue for long enough to justify buying the robots it could have used to make the fasteners. “If we’d known Tesla would go on that long, we definitely would have automated our assembly process,” said Gent, who said they looked at automating the line twice over the years. But he does not regret his caution. Earlier this year, Tesla notified Gent that it was pulling the business. “We’re not bitter,” said Gent. “It’s just how it works.”
Source: www.channelnewsasia.com
General view of metal cutting machines inside Gent Machine Co.’s 55-employee factory in Cleveland, Ohio, U.S., May 26, 2021. REUTERS/Timothy Aeppel
Gent does spend heavily on new equipment, relative to its small size about US$500,000 a year from 2011 to 2019. One purchase was a US$1.6 million computer-controlled cutting machine that cut the cycle time to make the Tesla
parts down from 38 seconds to 7 seconds - a major gain in productivity that flowed straight to Gent’s bottom line. “We found another part to make on the machine,” said Gent.
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