News: Dormer's challenge reaches £250,000 milestone

Dormer Tools has helped engineering companies across the country save more than a quarter of a million pounds as part of its "Value Challenge" initiative.

Based on the Advanced Manufacturing Park in Rotherham, the business has been inviting firms to challenge them to save significant amounts of money and time by offering cost-effective cutting tools and machining solutions.

Since the challenge was launched in February 2010, more than £250,000-worth of savings have been made and following the success of the UK challenge it has now been rolled out by Dormer's global partners in Europe and America.

Geoff Robinson, sales engineer at Dormer Tools, said: "The challenge is an opportunity to showcase to customers that using Dormer's tools can really help them make a significant cost saving. Instead of buying cheaper tools the client is buying better quality tools which are assisting them to manufacture their products at a lower cost.

"There is a lot of money being put into research and development to improve the tools Dormer are developing to make them better than anyone else. The type of coatings, design and joining can enable a tool to run faster and harder reducing the cycle time, which is one of the biggest costs in manufacturing.

"We've had some great successes with one of the best being a saving of £54,000 for just one customer during a year's manufacturing. The company produced wind turbine slewing rings and used a solid carbide deep hole drill from Dormer, reducing the cycle time for one ring by two hours.

"The machines which the rings go on are very large and very expensive, with a cost of around £90 per hour during manufacture. So a £180 saving per ring, with 30 rings per month needing to be produced, adds to a significant cost saving for the client."

By conducting a machining audit for their customer's Dormer can compare the productivity, time and cost of a competitor's product, Dormer can work out how much more efficient their tools have been for the company over a certain period of time.

Dormer Tools website

Images: Dormer Tools