I’ve said it before: scheduling your part’s blasting and coating well ahead of time is a great way to keep turnarounds short. With proper scheduling, (and depending on the size and scope of the project,) we can usually get parts blasted, coated, and back in your hands within a week.
HOWEVER.
Like most agreements, scheduling is a two-way street. We cannot uphold our end of the turnaround bargain if you do not uphold yours.
For instance, let’s imagine that we’ve made a plan together: you’ll drop your part off on the 18th of next month, and we’ll have it ready to pick up on the 25th. Now let’s imagine that you, for whatever reason, don’t drop your part off until the 20th. This puts us in a bind, and it’s likely that the turnaround time we quoted you is no longer possible.
The powder coating schedule is like a freight train – it’s bulky, and not particularly agile. Once it’s in motion, it’s hard to stop or reroute. If the train leaves the station at the agreed-upon time and your part is not on board, it’s likely to be a while before we can re-incorporate it into the plan.
Sometimes, customers call to schedule services for an indoor part (pretreatment and powder coating) and don’t tell us ‘til they day they drop off that their part is now going outdoors. This means that we have to blast it first, which adds time, and affects the date of completion.
It’s also not uncommon for the customer to change their mind about the color they want. This sounds simple…but it isn’t.
We build our powder coating schedule around the colors we’re spraying that week. If we know for sure we’ll have a freight truck’s worth of industrial parts that need matte black powder coating, that’s the perfect time for us to schedule all of the bed frames, lawn chairs, and other smaller projects that customers want done in that same color. If we scheduled you for matte black and you now want red, we may have to delay your project a little bit.
Additionally, we only stock the powder coating we plan to use. If you decide at the last minute that you want gloss black, but we have less of that powder than is required to complete your project, we’ll have to factor ordering and delivery time into the turnaround.
In summary: the sooner you communicate any color or application changes to us, the better. Be aware that certain changes may result in turnaround delays. And while scheduling ahead of time is ideal, it only works if all parties involved uphold their end of the bargain.
