Production and Supply Chain Update – August 2022
Return to Normalcy
While we are all happy to see that so much of our daily lives have returned to a pre-pandemic state, there are many things that haven’t yet rebounded, and many that will never be the same. There is still a massive shortage of willing workers that extends from labor-based jobs to executive level positions, and this doesn’t seem to be changing as quickly as we all would like. This worker shortage, and other factors has contributed to other supply chain slowdowns, many of which affect us directly here at Van Mark. For example, we are proud to say that we design, manufacture, and assemble our complete range of products here in the US. But that means that we lean on many Michigan-area suppliers of raw materials that are having a difficult time keeping up with our needs.
Where we are today
We have managed to work through many of our supplier delays and have adjusted our ordering and production scheduling to compensate for the extended lead times, which has really helped us stabilize. We have been able to reallocate our internal labor forces to focus on our primary products, bending brakes, to allow us to begin to catch up on open orders. Though we still have a long way to go, as of today, most of our products are taking much longer than usual, based on current order volume and existing orders.
What we expect for the rest of the year
We will continue to focus our resources on meeting the needs of our customers as quickly as we can. Our metal bending brakes will remain our priority, and other products will get back online as we free up team members and reallocate them to other products in our range. Trim-a-slitters have been the most challenging at this point due to the complexity of the assembly and the skilled man-hours required to build them. We haven’t given up on them though, and we expect that we will begin to see them coming off the production line soon. We will be filling slitter orders based on order date, so we suggest you place orders for them now so we can fill your order as soon as production gets back up and running. Most other products in our range should get back to more reasonable turnaround times as we move into Fall.
We appreciate your patience and continued support for the Van Mark brand. We want little more than to be able to get back to supplying the quality tools you need, when you need them. We hope to be able to do just that in the coming months.
Thank you,
-The team at Van Mark Products
