Insight

The home of the Nord-Lock wedge-locking washers in Mattmar, northern Sweden, was expanded by two-thirds to 8,700m² during the Covid-19 pandemic. Alongside the increase in physical space came the deployment of new machinery, enhanced processes and many additional personnel.

Meanwhile the geographic developments of coronavirus caused demand to fluctuate between regions and extraordinary logistical challenges added to an already uncertain environment for global companies. As the world leading manufacturer of the original wedge-locking washers, Nord-Lock prides itself on availability and fast delivery as much as outstanding quality. Wherever a customer is in the world, Nord-Lock delivers. However, the unique operating context of Covid-19 still challenged Nord-Lock’s position, just as it did everybody else.

Picture an idyllic Scandinavian landscape of forest and lakes in northern Sweden, and then ask yourself, why have a factory there? It’s a rather remote location if you consider delivering those products to South America, the Far East, or even guaranteeing fast lead times for customers in Central Europe. It’s a good question and the answer is simple. This is where the story of wedge-locking washers began in 1982.

It is where Nord-Lock’s heritage comes from and where many of its colleagues grew up. The people in Mattmar have very specialist skills, built up over decades of manufacturing Nord-Lock washers, and they are one of the company’s greatest strengths. In the home of the wedge-locking washer, Nord-Lock is not just a product or a brand, it is an important part of the local community.

Still, it might seem nothing short of a miracle that Nord-Lock has continued to provide the same high standard of delivery performance as before, especially as it operationalised the new facilities during 2021. However, the reality is not so down to chance. Had Nord-Lock not been investing in its ability to manufacture and supply products to customers over the long-term, things could have been very different.

Put simply, Nord-Lock is now making more of the best wedge-locking washers in the world than ever before, and making sure they are available precisely in the moment a customer needs them – wherever they are in the world. How is it that the company is able to grow, improve the quality of washers and maintain deliveries during a tough period?

The answer lies partly in building an organisation that is extremely close to the markets and customers it serves, while creating and running a business with the flexibility to cope with changing demands, both in the short and long-term.

Hanna Månsson, customer centre manager at Nord-Lock, heads up a department of highly qualified staff in Mattmar. This customer centre is divided into three regional teams covering the Americas, Europe and Asia respectively. Each unit is comprised of technical product specialists, plus sales support colleagues who are closely connected to the sales engineer offices that Nord-Lock Group has all over the world.

In the mornings, work is done so that colleagues in the Americas region can wake up to an overnight response. The afternoons are more focused on colleagues in Asia, and then of course throughout the day they’re on the same schedule as Europe, which makes it easier. Perhaps there’s not too much novelty in having this regional split, but the centralisation of its global customer team, in the same building as production and planning, does have a tremendous impact on Nord-Lock’s efficiency.

Due to vast experience within the team, they’re able to handle 80% of incoming questions directly, but for those remaining 20%, they may need to discuss raw materials with purchasing, lead times with planning, or technical drawings and tooling with engineering. Thankfully, those people are within walking distance.

“We’re a relatively small team, but we have a really large support team in the background,” says Hanna. During the last eighteen months, they’ve had a laser focus on global stock availability. Three main distribution points in Germany, the USA and China have been kept well stocked and meticulously controlled. Material Requirements Planning (MRP) is a daily priority for some regions and quarterly reviews of stock positions were given even more acute attention, balancing the unique year with historical sales to make sure that the company could always deliver.

It’s about having the right product, in the right place, at the right time, but Nord-Lock has several hundred products to maintain. At times, the team even switched to daily, manual work in close cooperation with the planning team.

Lead times for raw materials have been unprecedented. Purchasers that have worked in the industry for more than thirty years have never experienced a situation quite like this. In response, Nord-Lock used close collaboration with its global sales teams to forecast demand changes – so there are instances where the company is placing raw material orders one year in advance to mitigate the risk.

The other major constraint over the year has been responding to the rapid increase in sales, as all industries emerged from the pandemic. The increase in demand meant that Nord-Lock needed to employ many new production colleagues and onboard them with a technical production process.

Hanna comments: “It’s been strained, but we’re proud to have maintained very high availability in the past eighteen months. Everyone did a fantastic job in keeping customers happy and we have received positive feedback from distributors in recent months, impressed and almost puzzled at how well we’ve maintained deliverability.”

Mike van Bergeijk, sourcing category manager at Fabory, a customer of Nord-Lock, adds: “To keep our own promises to customers, it goes without saying that we need an accurate performance and replenishment from our suppliers. Nord-Lock is a premium fastener brand frequently used in high-end applications, so at all costs, line stops at our customers should be avoided. Throughout the pandemic we remained in close consultation with Nord-Lock, even sharing our own forecasts to facilitate with planning, and the result was continuously reliable supply – even during the rough times.”

Nord-Lock has maintained a competitive advantage by keeping lead times short, even on non-standard, customer unique special orders too. Sometimes a customer needs wedge-locking washers with different outer/inner dimensions, a slightly different material or sizes outside of its standard range. The production process is completely flexible, and Nord-Lock has the capacity to turn these around quickly because of the clear process, close internal collaboration and a narrow chain of command that the company maintains globally – from customers, through sales to its customer centre and directly into production.

Even the more complicated requests Nord-Lock can respond to quickly, because it has usually done it before. However, in some instances, the company might need support from sales and the customer to fully diagnose the need for their applications.

At the very least, a first response is given directly because “for me, success is about really understanding the customer need and responding quickly. Our overall vision is to provide proactive and trusted sales and technical support to all customers at a global level,” concludes Hanna.