I was walking the shop floor the other day and stopped to chat with Kayla and ask her what she was winding. It was four ends of Type T, Thermally Heat Cleaned yellow 450 ½ fiberglass yarns onto a 4 ¼” tube. At another station, Jamie was winding 2 ends of 150 ½ white on a 5 ¼” tube, also Thermally Heat Cleaned, and the other operators were all winding something different still. The thought occurred to me that we offer LOTS of different possible combinations of PTFE Coated Fiberglass Yarn. I wondered how many there are.
How many combinations of PTFE Coated Fiberglass Yarn could we possibly make? The formula is more complicated than I remembered from High School math class… so off to Google to find a combination calculator! Given that we have 7 sizes of fiberglass yarn products that we regularly coat (ex: 450 ½, 150 ½, etc…), in a natural Type R yarn and in 9 Type T Mil-Standard colors, then add the number of parallel ends we wind, the package we can wind them onto, etc. and you come up with over 6 million possible combinations! Wow. The reality is that some of those possible combinations will never happen. But a quick look at last year’s production reveals we wound over 200 different combinations, some in quantities as small as one pound. OK, nowhere near 6 million, but still impressive, I think.
And remember that we do not require minimum order quantities for most products we manufacture. If we’re coating an “odd duck” product, we do an entire coating run. This means we’ll be carrying inventory on that product for some time, but if someone needs 3 ends of purple 225 ½, we’ll be able to respond quickly and, almost always, with no minimum order quantity. Sure, we carry inventory that some “consultants” would consider ridiculous, but when our customers need it, we’re ready to supply them quickly.
The possibility of many different combinations of PTFE Coated Fiberglass Sewing Thread also exists, but our standard products pretty much cover the gamut. Of course, we’re always developing new products in response to customer needs. How about a UV Resistant, PTFE Coated Kevlar Sewing Thread, black in color… we’ve already done it (R722-80BLK)! And we can do many other combinations. But even without calculating all the possible combinations, we currently offer over 50 different types of PTFE Coated Sewing Thread as standard products. It’s worth noting that our ability to twist products in-house allows us to offer such a wide variety of products quickly and cost effectively. It also enables us to react quickly to new opportunities.
PTFE Coated Fiberglass Lacing Tapes and Tie Cord along with PTFE Coated Fiberglass Draw Cord have an impressive 23 options as well. That number would expand exponentially if you considered different package types, possible colors, etc…
Suffice it to say, our product offering is extremely large, especially when considering possible combinations. It takes a willingness to invest heavily in coating and winding capacity, as well as inventory, to produce what really is a small amount of product by volume.
After 35 years, our operators continue to get it done quickly, accurately and efficiently… impressive indeed.