Helping Companies Machine Tough Material: Engman-Taylor

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Engman-Taylor, a leading industrial distributor

No business can operate in a vacuum. Each needs dedicated employees, passionate leaders, and supplies to make products and provide services the industry needs. Quality suppliers and partners are an important facet of every organization’s strategy for success.

As a supplier to more than 1,300 manufacturers, Engman-Taylor understands the importance of its role in its customers’ success.

Engman-Taylor is an industrial distributor, servicing all industries from industrial to commercial to institutional, with a focus on integrated supply and lowering the overall cost for every single customer. With a wide range of products, from mopping buckets to stationary drill presses, Engman-Taylor is able to provide comprehensive offerings to its industrial clients.

“Many of our customers make things out of metal. We provide the cutting tools that cut and shape metal, as well as assembly tools for those customers to put components together into a finished product,” said Rick Star, President and CEO of Engman-Taylor.

The industrial distributor doesn’t stop there. It doesn’t just supply products, but also provides extensive knowledge and services so customers can get the most out of their purchases.

“There’s a perception in this industry that the best way someone can reduce their costs is for companies like us to sell them our product at a cheaper price, but it’s not the only way, and indeed has the least amount of impact,” said Star.

“Instead, we educate our customers on how to best use and apply in the manufacturing process the tools they are purchasing.”

Not only offering high-quality products and helping its customers re-engineer processes from within, Engman-Taylor also breaks down and rebuilds administrative methods to better control costs and to boost efficiency and productivity.

Now, the company is looking toward technological advancements to take it to the next level.

e-TAYLORED Tool Optimization Services Department

To help its customers produce quality, precise results every time they use a tool supplied by the industrial distributor, the company is launching a “tool optimization services” department. The main focus will be to perfectly fit tools for the job.

“The department is a proactive solution,” Star shared. “Customers will buy a cutting tool and put it in their machine and assume the tool will perform perfectly—but sometimes that’s not the case. Instead of customers calling us to ask us to ‘fix’ it, we fit the tool to the machine to start.”

There are three areas Engman-Taylor’s enhanced tool service department will focus on: shrink fitting, tool balancing, and tool presetting.

Shrink Fitting Tools

Shrink fitting addresses the way the tool holder grips the tool. If the tool holder is “shrunk” around the tool shank, the tool will be more accurate and more secure. The machine will be able to run more aggressively and produce higher quality parts faster.

Tool Balancing

When a tool is unbalanced and rotating at high speeds, centrifugal force can create out of round and other negative conditions. The perfect circle that you thought you were making might instead come out like an oval; tool balancing eliminates this problem.

Tool Presetting

If a cutting tool is not set up properly, it may cut repeatedly, but to incorrect dimensions. Tool setting takes care of this. But when tool setting is done on the CNC machine tools, the setting process takes up machine time that should be dedicated to metal cutting. Tool presetting takes care of this, as the tools are set before they reach the CNC machine tool.

“Our shrink fitting, balancing, and presetting services can either be purchased a la carte or the customer can buy all three as a package for the ultimate in quality,” said Star.

The industrial distributor has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in shrink fitting, tool balancing, and presetting machines to elevate the performance of the products purchased by their clients. The company’s motto of “products, performance, perfection” is clearly illustrated via Engman-Taylor’s e-TAYLORED Tool Optimization Services.

New Website & App

To complement its new department and add even more value for customers, Engman-Taylor launched a new website in October 2017. The company has also started a digital marketing program to share its services with more people.

“We beta tested some things during the first half of the year. Initially we had good results, so we hired a Digital Marketing Manager, which fully committed us to the endeavor. Our strategy has since been tweaked with more SEO, PPC, and social media emphasis.”

The main goal of the marketing push is to pull prospects inward by generating demand from people who are looking for what Engman-Taylor provides rather than advertising outward to an audience that only includes a small percentage of people who need what Engman-Taylor provides.

To handle the demand generated via digital marketing, the company has upgraded its e-commerce capability and also developed a mobile app.

“Much web business in our industry is done independent of people. In our case, our primary advantage is that our people know a lot about our products. So, our e-commerce solution is a complement to, not a replacement of, our people.

“In order to demonstrate our expertise, we have to be in front of the customer, face-to-face. We still want to do that. But our digital marketing effort will find more people for us to get in front of, and our web store and app will allow easier and more seamless transactions when our customer buys,” Star said.

On top of this, the company’s new app will be a huge benefit to current customers, who will be able to keep track of what they ordered, when it is going to be delivered, and other key metrics.

“Nobody in our industry, big or small, is doing anything like this. We are going to set the pace as the only technically oriented distributor that ties its marketing efforts into a web store” shared Star.