Most business and sales theory says to be successful you must define your company or brand in very narrow terms. A company must be dominant and seen as a thought leader in their niche within a particular industry. Piping Supplies has been a leading manufacturer of forged pipe flanges in the industrial pipe, valve, and fitting, PVF, market for over 50 years. Our company has also become a leader in the US Navy pipe flange world. Piping Supplies machines pipe flanges in just about any metal like carbon steel, stainless steel, Monel, Inconel, aluminum, chrome molly, and copper-nickel just to name a few. How do you know it is time to branch out of your comfort zone into machining beyond pipe flanges?
Piping Supplies machine shop is like many others. We can machine round parts from 3″ outside diameter to 60″ outside diameter and non-round parts up to 18″ X 38″ X 15″ tall. Our combination of conventional lathes and drill presses with CNC, computer numeric controlled, lathes and milling machines gives our machine shop a wide range of capabilities. The problem a lot of job shops have is trying not to be everything to everyone even if you have the ability to make certain parts. We struggle with that problem all of the time. The saying goes, “If you try to sell to everyone, you will end up selling to no one.”
Piping Supplies is constantly investing in training for our machinists, adding new machines, and upgrading the software needed to run these increasingly complex computer controlled machines. This investment has lead to becoming very efficient as expert pipe flange manufacturers. Constant improvement has also lead to extra time available on our very expensive precision machines. Having the experienced machinists, best equipment, and extra time on our machines has led us to look for machining beyond pipe flanges.
Opportunities come from the most unlikely places. One of our partners was at a boat show talking to a sales person about trolling motors. The salesman was telling him how popular these GPS enabled motors were becoming and relating to him about his trouble getting the mounting plates for those motors. The mounting plates were made from 1/2″ thick aluminum, cut to a special size and shape, drilled with mounting holes for the boat and threaded holes to attach the motor, then powder coated to resist the harsh salt water environment in which they will be put in service. Definitely not pipe flanges but something we could make. Many meetings, phone calls and brainstorming sessions later, we got our first order for over 100 different trolling motor mounting plates!
The team of subcontractors from the aluminum supplier, to the person flame cutting the shapes, to the tooling supplier, to the powdering company are all in place. We are now creating the fixtures needed to make these plates quickly and efficiently. Like all new machining projects, there will be a learning curve. Also like all new projects, we will learn new skills and create solutions which can be applied to other jobs in the future. Piping Supplies will make our first set of trolling motor mounting plates in the next two weeks. After that, who knows where our contacts in the world of salt water boating will lead us. That is the magic of trying something new and stepping into the world of machining beyond pipe flanges.