A long-time customer in the fuel dispensing industry sought help refining the design of a next-generation gas dispenser model. The client realized that the model’s size and complexity precluded the option of using traditional fabrication techniques and tooling.

Our customer needed a custom gas dispenser frame built from galvanized steel that would be 4 feet wide, 2 feet deep, and 8 feet tall. Components this large would require special tooling, as well as a significant initial investment. 

Smaller metal fabrication shops do not have the ability to generate and process the unit’s parts due to their large size, nor the capacity and supplier network to produce the volumes the customer required and so they partnered with New Standard to help them find solutions.

To address the tooling expense, New Standard invested over $1 million in blank tools, building this into the contract. The contract included provisions regarding decreases in product manufacturing costs for each new contract period. This would allow us to continue working with the customer for decades, utilizing our engineering expertise to reduce costs over time.

Our engineering team worked with the customer to refine their product design through our vast experience in design for manufacturability (DFM). The manufacturing process called for either a stamping or a fabrication strategy to produce the end product, and both processes had benefits for the overall delivery to market. New Standard chose an combination strategy that utilized both processes. 

We capitalized on our core competencies of metal stamping, fabrication, and complex assembly to build the frames per the client’s specifications and volume requirements. We utilized in-house stamping presses to begin the work and press brakes for final forming. The merging of our stamping and fabrication processes enabled us to provide greater cost savings to our customer than their previous supplier had been able to achieve.

For the welding and final assembly work, we expanded the supplier network within the first nine months, entering into a joint venture with a facility near the customer to serve as a staging area for assembly. Transporting the parts required anywhere from 7 to 13 truckloads each day to keep pace with our customer’s production schedules. New Standard’s solutions allowed for flexibility in scheduling and scalable solutions for our customer’s ultimate end-users by selecting New Standard as the key coordinating partner.

At the peak of production, this assembly partner was unable to keep up with the necessary volume. NSC brought product assembly back in-house during that time to ensure timely deliveries and even after the peak had passed, continued final assembly thereby again reducing our customer’s costs.. By adapting our processes to suit the demands of the project, our vertically integrated company was able to support the client for the full lifecycle of the frame development, production, and delivery from every aspect.