How we operate as Germany’s leading on-demand platform for CNC-machined parts
How to transform CNC machining into the digital age?
How long do you manage to put your cell phone aside without glancing at your e-mails, status messages or the minute-by-minute updates in the news? How often are you tempted to make a necessary purchase with a few clicks on Amazon instead of driving to a local store? These small but telling examples show just how much digitization is already ingrained in our minds.
Online platforms are organizing and evaluating the multitude of offers. By bringing transparency, availability and comparability to instransparent markets, platforms are becoming the first contact point for many buyers. From flight searches on Google Flights to software comparisons on G2: comparability ensures a tailored selection of products and services.
The first wave of digitization and the platform economy primarily affected B2C offerings. However, expectations of affordability, quality and prime delivery speed are also reflected in business operations and B2B procurement. In fact, ancillary procurement costs in corporate purchasing often exceed the actual product costs many times over. Especially in Germany, the country of iron-clad processes, guidelines and high labor costs, the time is ripe for the use of procurement platforms in business operations.
CNC-Machining goes digital in Europe’s industrial powerhouse
Metal manufacturing is a huge industry in Germany. With a good 10,000 companies, 1 million employees and 250B EUR in sales, it supplies a large number of other industries. Compared with other manufacturing sectors, the export ratio is low, which underlines its importance as a Tier-1 supplier to the leading German industries of automotive, chemicals and mechanical engineering. Currently, capacity utilization in the German manufacturing industries is high due to broken supply chains and catch-up effects after the Corona crisis. For buyers of manufacturing services and parts, the procurement is challenging.
In this environment of fragmented supply side, lack of availability and high costs, manufacturing platforms are growing fast. A simple classification of existing manufacturing platforms can be made based on these criteria:
- Manufacturing bandwidth: Are the widest possible variety of manufacturing processes offered or is there specialization in individual manufacturing technologies? Suppliers with the widest possible range naturally make it easier to order different types of components from a single point of contact. Specialized suppliers naturally offer better know-how, usually a better range for the specific process and ultimately better quality.
- Procurement strategy: Some platforms here rely exclusively on German companies to place manufacturing orders. Even if local patriotism probably plays a dominant role here, these providers trust in the quality promise of German manufacturers. Internationally sourcing platforms, on the other hand, try to exploit the cost advantages abroad for German companies. Here, a clear quality strategy is particularly important.
- Transaction vs. brokering: Some platforms limit themselves to brokering orders between clients and contractors. In the case of transaction platforms, on the other hand, the platform acts as the legal contractual partner and creates economies of scale in procurement through adequate processes.
In contrast to many other industries, a manufacturing platform is characterized by a special feature: So-called “engineered products” are usually special purpose designs, that make each order dependent on many individual factors, regardless of the quantity. In Germany in particular, quality is of great importance and often comes first as a decision-making criterion and thus supposedly competes with favorable purchasing conditions.
Our USP: Quality by Design
At InstaWerk, we have a difficult but important mission: We want to digitize CNC machining — that is, CNC turning and CNC milling — and thus make it accessible and faster. At the same time, we do not accept compromises in quality.
In accordance with the above classification, we have therefore focused on one process in the manufacturing bandwidth: CNC-machining and turning. We are happy to leave the grip on world domination to others and are convinced: focus, in-depth understanding and cooperation with specialized manufacturing partners ensure high quality and a customer experience based on reliability, problem solving and efficient processes.
We source internationally. After all, not every simple component justifies the wage and performance levels of German manufacturers. However, we also have a specialized network of manufacturers in Germany, which we activate when highest demands on the component, short delivery times and/or special manufacturing processes are required.
Since our platform is curated and only accessible to exclusive manufacturing partners, we can set standards for data security, manufacturer selection and quality that clearly distance us from “open platforms”. So we reconcile excellent conditions and quality. In addition, we relieve our customers of all worries about logistics, customs formalities and unreliability.
As a direct contractual partner in Germany for our customers, we stand by our promise of quality. In addition, we can develop customized solutions with our engineering team, allowing our platform to act as a total solution provider when support is required by the customer.
Experience remains decisive even with digital solutions
As much as we all benefit from the constant availability of digital products, we must also be clear about the limitations of digital solutions. While a good movie on Netflix can be distributed across the world by the millions, CNC components are individually designed, precision-defining and demanding components.
We are convinced that our platform will make an important contribution to the digitalization of manufacturing in Germany. Highest availability, excellent conditions and convenient ordering processes are in harmony with quality and reliability in our concept.
