Winning Tug-of-War Against Weak Supply Chain

From the fall of 2021 to the spring of 2022, severe raw material shortages worldwide forced many manufacturers to extend lead times until their resins and metals arrived. In a lean JIT world, it didn’t take long for manufacturers industrywide to find their inventories depleted. Customer lead times were delayed by broken supply chains and a freefall of U.S. imports. Lead times extended from weeks to months and in some cases up to a year. Interpower saw its Molding department lead times pushed back to 28 weeks, but is currently shipping orders at 10 weeks as lead times continue to shorten.

The Made-to-Order (MTO) department, however, has clawed its way back to 1-week lead times. Originally, Interpower had maintained its unique 1-week lead time on all cords, cord sets and components since 2008 until severe supply chain disruptions occurred. An MTO assembly is a product created per customer specifications, whereas a stock item is manufactured from predetermined specifications and placed in inventory.

MTO specializes in customized requests and value-added services such as unique cord colors and lengths, rewirable connectors, accessory power strips (APS), and power distribution units (PDUs) from their metal housings or “cans” to their interior electrical components, and their addition of ferrules, ferrites, heat-shrink tubing and cable terminations.

Also, MTO is responsible for an array of services including specialized labeling for any power cord and cord set including wrapped, flagged, barcoded, and grounding reliability labels as well as Unique Device Identification. MTO packaging includes cords and cord sets that are coiled, bundled, hanked, and tied. There are special packaging options offering various products in the same box, such as an APS and country-specific cord sets with labeling per customer specifications.

Learn More About Made-To-Order Assembly Options