Flat Pack or Factory Assembled: Challenges of On-Demand Manufacturing

We are an on-demand manufacturing business, which means we make what you want, in the quantity you require. When ever I go to networking events, people right away try to make sense of what we do, CNCROi.com isn’t a traditional business but something far more exciting and innovative.

Are you a…. ?

CNCROi.com is a custom on-demand manufacturer of goods, this means a lot of things to different people.

I tell some people yeah, we can custom design and fabricate your corporate award – right away – thoughts of trophy shops selling their imported junk come into their mind. I then have to remind them that the only thing we import into our shop is raw lumber and other materials and actually MAKE your award in the shop.

Other companies, in manufacturing themselves making widgets and machines, I tell them we can make the metal tags to brand their equipment out of stainless steel, anodized aluminium and even custom stamp to their spec. If they need a custom metal tag out of 24 gauge 316 stainless steel that’s 3.45″ x 12.75″ with round corners and 5 holes – yep, we do that!

We also talk with architects, about how we can custom fabricate various interior and exterior signage using materials such as Corian, exterior laminates and even glass! Take “simple” things like custom on-demand manufactured and branded (if they wish) house number signs.

We have leather companies that use us to cut their leather to size and even brand it to their customer’s specs… on-demand manufacturing at its best!

Some people really like our custom mirror production capabilities… any shape or size I tell them! This is one of the many advantages to custom on-demand manufacturing, whether products are all the same or different, you aren’t stuck to suit your creative spirit into a mold for thousands of units.

Some companies even use us to brand their tools to remove any issues relating to theft or to make location tracking easy using UPC codes which contractors and customers scan using their cell phone with GPS! No two tools are the same and as such, this is yet another perfect application for on-demand manufacturing.

Of course, we also do weddings, from custom gifts they can give to their guests to cake toppers and table number stands.

Of course, we also do physical product development as well, simple things…

To more complicated things you can drive around, like this wooden big wheels.

Including 3D modeling so that the first time we make something, IT WORKS!

Any one of these unique services can be a business in of themselves, but for us, this diversity keeps us on our toes and experience gathered from one project generally lends itself to the next one down the line. This is not a “Jack of all trades” type of business in the slightest, more like a “high tide raises all boats”.

What is On-Demand Manufacturing?

Now that you hopefully have an understanding of how broad our skill sets are across so many different applications, let’s go onto the next challenge, on-demand manufacturing. Basically, with us, if you need 10 stainless steel tags annealed to spec or a thousand, we can make them all for you in one shot, drip them out to you in batches or make them as you sell your inventory. This means we hold the inventory on your behalf for your just-in-time manufacturing processes.

What is Custom Manufacturing?

Custom manufacturing means we make things to your spec, sometimes personalized with serial numbers and branding, sometimes just generic which then go through another cog in the manufacturing stream of which we are only a small part of. For us, lots of what we do is custom, as we start from the raw materials and make something for our customers and the other half are semi-finished which we improve upon.

Regardless, the requirements are directly related to making something unique out of something unique.

What is On-Demand Custom Manufacturing?

This is where the fun begins for us, basically, a company that we produce custom machine plates have each machine with unique serial numbers, weight and other operating tolerances. The plate is custom to spec but always the same and the information on it is also custom each time around so what we do is make a bunch of metal plates but don’t laser mark or anneal them until we get a call or email from the manufacturer that the machine is prepped and ready to go.

So, as the machine is on its way out the door, we are producing the final plate to be welded or riveted. Sometimes this happens for one-off machines where there is a few weeks lead time (works best for all involved) and other times, quite literally, a custom order came in from our client and they need it TOMORROW.

Flat Pack or Factory Assembled

Due to the fact that we custom make everything in our shop, some of it, like custom wall plaques and custom key chains are shipped as-is but larger items, we can provide a design that’s either optimized for flat packing or factory assembly. For instance, if you wanted that Wooden Big Wheels, do you want all the components shipped to you, do you want them put together into larger components or do you want the whole thing ready to go!

Each has a + and -. Flat packing will save you a lot of money for packaging VOLUME (the weight is still the same) while you will have to put things together at your end, if you have the right tools and skills. For some things, we can design it so assembly is dead-easy requiring no tooling at all. For instance, our F16 inspired corporate award is all built-in the shop ready to go flat-packed and all you need to do is put the top into the base. Gravity holds it there.

In other cases, like our custom rubber stamps, we ship them completely assembled and ready to get stamping.

As the brochure above stats, contact us and we’ll get your custom project done for you!