Doric Products is Australia's largest privately-owned hardware manufacturer supplying innovative door and window hardware for residential, commercial and architectural applications. In early 2000’s Doric was running out of internal capacity to keep up with demand. They had a large production facility with numerous machines, and a large collection of tooling. The strategic decision was taken to outsource all manufacturing, and focus on the assembly, packaging and warehousing of their products.
Swift Metal was awarded the pressing & stamping work in 2003, and commenced manufacturing immediately. Doric sold a few job-specific machinery to Swift in order to keep a consistent supply. This had a massive impact on the operations & growth potential for Doric. The 3 main immediate benefits were:
Controllable lead times: Goods are now delivered as they are needed, instead of manufacturing needing to be completed before the parts could be assembled.
Massively Increased output: The transition proved instrumental in their ability to grow the business. They were no longer limited to what they could achieve in their own factory and resources, human and otherwise, were re-invested elsewhere in the organisation.
Fixed costs. This means that any costing blow outs were contained, and efficiency is now the responsibility of Swift.
Scarcely had the improvement process been completed, when a catastrophic fire destroyed the Doric facility. A disaster averted just in time, because manufacturing was outsourced to Swift Metal, replacement stock was able to be ordered at once and within a period of weeks, Doric was back up to full speed, and growing.
15 years later, Swift and Doric are still in a strong partnership. Recently in a further strategic move, Doric outsourced some of their assembly work to another vendor. Because a stable supply chain and costs were already in place, the transition was simple and without any issues. Swift now delivers parts to both Doric, and the assembly subcontractor, and continuity of supply is not compromised.
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