Fapco: Top 10 Reasons to Partner with a Full-service Contract Packager “With over 25 years of serving some of the largest OEM firms in the USA, we have identified these “Top Ten” reasons why manufacturers, both large and small, can cut costs, streamline operations and concentrate more on their core competencies by partnering with a full service contract packaging firm like Fapco,” states Fapco Founder and President, Larry Gardiner 1. Focus your company’s talents and capacity on your core business. OEM manufacturers can and should stick to their core competencies of research and development, engineering, building quality products, growing their business through sales and taking their products to market. Partnering with Fapco, OEMs are better able to keep their eye on the manufacturing ball and do what they do best—build quality products. Building a Tier One relationship with a contract packager such as Fapco liberates a manufacturing firm from the overhead and associated labor costs, and headaches of package design, packaging processes, material handling, equipment maintenance, warehousing, finished part inspection and even parts purchasing and assembly. Fapco continues to help some of the largest OEMs in the world, do what they do best. 2. Take advantage of Fapco as your source for highly trained, flexible labor to meet your exact needs for packaging and materials management. Partner with a contract packager to reduce the training, labor, facility and equipment costs associated with packaging and warehousing in-house. At Fapco our people are already highly trained, dedicated and ready to help with your next packaging challenge. Freeing up your labor pool from the tedious burdens of material handing, packaging and warehousing translates to big cost savings in training and payroll. Eliminate much of the time and labor it takes to manage and receive raw materials from suppliers for packaging related goods. Receiving, inspecting, kitting, packaging, consolidating, warehousing and fulfilling parts and products to the distribution chain is our job 24/7. The highly trained staff at Fapco can provide these services to your firm faster, more efficiently and at a lower cost in labor and overhead. 3. Move expensive packaging equipment purchases, maintenance and facility costs off your books. The time has come for your company to ask the tough question, “Can we really afford to handle all this packaging in house?” Fapco has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in the finest automated packaging equipment to increase your bottom line. We’ve already made the investment in equipment, training operators, automated technology and the square-foot cost to house the operation. Maintaining and servicing equipment and facilities is yet another item transferred to Fapco. Continuing packaging operations inhouse is an expensive proposition. And the decision to pull the investment into expanding these operations in-house can actually be a volatile move in this competitive global environment. Fapco can provide you free analysis of these key scenarios with the cost savings provided to your bottom line. 4. Handle seasonal and spike demand seamlessly with half the headaches. The rush season is here. With it comes the seasonal work for your staff to handle the packaging of all these parts and replacement kits. Many OEMs will call the temp agency, un-tarp the packaging equipment, schedule the equipment maintenance and set up the new temp training for the operation. Other manufacturers will make just one phone call-to Fapco. Take the burden off your internal operations and labor costs to handle spike demand periods by partnering with a contract packager. Lower your temp, training, management, labor, equipment, utility and facility costs. Dedicate that square footage to manufacturing. Employ our experienced staff of packaging professionals who stand ready to handle your flex periods—from receiving the orders through our system, to warehousing excess projected parts left over from the program for next year—Fapco understands flex-demand, seasonal packaging and fulfillment. 5. Improve your company’s capital management parts program—partner with a contract packager as your Tier One supplier. Take the burden of dealing with multiple parts suppliers off your staff. Partner with your contract packaging firm to make them your primary, Tier One supplier for parts fulfillment. Purchasing the parts and components, receiving the inventory, warehousing and fulfilling parts are services now available to you from Fapco. Imagine dealing with one supplier for your parts fulfillment plan instead of over 100. Let the contract packager purchase, receive, inspect, assemble, package and hold the parts in their supply until they are ready to be fulfilled. In today’s lean environment the following OEMs are good candidates for Fapco’s Tier One Parts Purchasing Program: 1) limited parts warehouse space, 2) too many parts suppliers in a given parts program, 3) the need to focus on more key competencies in manufacturing, 4) companies in flux with either high growth or down sizing, 5) a need to better expedite emergency orders for JIT delivery, 6) require help with packaging engineering. 6. Improve your distribution and supply chain systems by adding a team of creative logistics specialists with hundreds of years of combined experience. From shipping to overseas ports, distribution centers, depots, terminals, stores, dealerships or even the customer in their home, the Fapco staff has hundreds of years combined experience to incorporate and fine-tune your logistics. Fapco offers a team of experienced contract packaging and logistics specialists ready to help you with flex demand, private labeling strategies, bar coding, strategic fulfillment services, consolidation services, container and overseas shipping. When it comes to packaging, Fapco can sort out cost savings solutions based on decades of implementing programs for parts as large as diesel engines to poly bagging nuts and bolts. Partnering with Fapco provides your company with a virtual team of experienced, packaging and distribution experts without increasing your overhead. 7. Take advantage of a full-service, certified packaging design engineering staff without adding a cent to your payroll. Certified, degreed packaging engineers at Fapco have the experience and expertise to help your company solve packaging challenges. Fapco provides innovative packaging solutions as part of our overall services without burdening your resources in-house. Our packaging engineering staff creates the best solutions to package, carton and ship your products with the highest degree of protection for the lowest cost. Fapco has all the solutions ready at your disposal--from carton packaging to poly bagging, large-part crating to shrink wrapping. Whether your company has stringent packaging specifications or is in need of packaging prototype development to ship a delicate part, Fapco stands ready. And when it comes to print production for custom branding applications we have you covered with in-house printing and secondary resources. 8. Eliminate warehousing facility, labor and management costs from your core business. Make sure your contract-packager has completely scalable warehousing and distribution operations like Fapco. Fapco offers completely customizable, one-stop warehousing services to OEM and tier suppliers. From complete online integration, ordering and fulfillment processes, replenishment systems, and fast turnarounds, contract packagers like Fapco can help your bottom line. These services are far more affordable for OEMs, taking the place of staffing, equipping and maintaining a stand-alone warehouse facility. Fapco can then take fulfillment orders through e-mail, fax or integrated online services. Every part in the warehouse is stored within the system so Fapco can pull parts and fulfill them on an as needed basis. Fapco can pull and ship parts with any shipping supplier a customer prefers, be it FedEx, UPS or airfreight to meet the tight deadlines of expedited orders anywhere in the world. 9. Take advantage of Fapco’s central location to service your customers. Its Buchanan, Michigan location places Fapco within a five-hour radius of 44 million people. Fapco’s strategic location to Tier One manufacturing suppliers and their OEMs allows companies to benefit from close proximity to major markets: Fapco is just 90 miles from Chicago, 150 miles from Indianapolis, 140 miles from Toledo, 200 miles from Detroit, 225 miles from Cleveland, 390 miles from St. Louis and just 585 miles from Pittsburgh. For next day, small package ground and less-than-truckload services Fapco’s location to the nearby South Bend, Indiana UPS hub has the second largest, overthe-road, overnight ground delivery, in terms of population, out of any of its U.S. centers. This hub serves a next-day ground population of 47 million people. Less-thantruckload service provided by carriers like FedEx Freight reach over 70 million people next day and nearly two-thirds of the U.S. population within two days. 10. Partner with a full service contract packager to consolidate much of your manufacturing parts purchasing, packaging, warehousing and fulfillment business into one supplier at one location. The right full-service, contract packaging firm can drastically streamline your parts supplier base, labor costs, warehousing, shipping and accounting systems into one major supplier. Why deal with multiple parts suppliers on replacement parts programs when you can just deal with one – Fapco. Stop shipping parts to multiple locations for different packaging needs when Fapco has them all in one location. Eliminate the costs of warehousing facilities, with the associated labor and overhead, by engaging Fapco’s completely scalable warehousing resources. Let Fapco assist in your supply chain and distribution network with direct ship options. And when you use a contract packager such as fapco in combination with all these logistics disciplines, your company will experience significant savings in ship-through cost alone. Why deal with literally hundreds of suppliers when you can deal with just one – Fapco!