A good way to save money on parts and Valves materials is to work closely with suppliers, says Norman. A supplier often has knowledge that customers may have lost through downsizing and the resulting loss of experience. That supplier can provide the expertise to allow customers "to not over-maintain but maintain at a reasonable level and focus more on the critical applications than one-size-fits-all throughout the whole plant," he adds.

Ed Holtgraver, CEO, QTRCO, Inc., reports his company has had positive results through minimizing its total number of suppliers. "If we buy investment castings we'll buy them all from the same company-we don't place an order for a specific part," he says. Instead, "We place an order for all the parts that company makes on a monthly basis, and we project out three or four months into the future so our suppliers know they have an assured customer." Also, this creates a situation in which there's no need to expedite, and the supplier can build ahead to even out its work load.

Holtgraver says another way to save money is to buy materials as kits. "If we bought a group of parts for any given product from a supplier, we're now ordering kits," he explains. As a result, time is saved that would have been spent getting parts ready to put together, and the company has been able to increase production volume by a factor of four with no increase in personnel, he says.

David Moser, president of DFT, Inc., says another good idea is to be vigilant and make sure suppliers' prices are in line with raw material costs. For example, though stainless-steel prices have been high, in recent months the prices of steel scrap and nickel have come down, so it's important to make sure that prices quoted by materials' vendors come down as well, he explains.