Festo has made ordering and supplier transition a virtually hassle-free task for some of its customers by providing readily designed sub-assembled solutions.These 'sub-assemblies' are modules that can be purchased as single items and, in many cases, are viewed as "simply components" by the end customer. Festo's sub-assemblies come as a result of changes in the economic requirements of many customers, who are focusing more on greater efficiency through 'vendor reduction' and 'component count reduction' programs.
While a part of the market will always want to select and integrate components themselves, many companies now look for ways of outsourcing these tasks to professional suppliers.
Festo is flexible enough to change its scope of supply and to design sub-assemblies itself.
With this approach it becomes possible to see clear boundaries of competence and economic sense when viewing a machine.
Festo's Dave Bowyer comments: "With detailed knowledge of a customer's application, we are able to select the right components and combine them with additional external parts to allow a custom assembly to be provided.
By investing time and resources to better understand the use of equipment in our customers' applications, it has become more important that we know how to best optimise an application and take responsibility for designing in our own equipment."