RUSH Service

As a supplier to the schedule-critical NDT industry, PH Tool™ offers several levels of delivery service options. Our ‘normal’ lead time for the machining of custom reference standards and test blocks is very short, but often not short enough for the needs of our customers. A customer with an upcoming outage, an aircraft-on-ground (AOG) situation, or an inspection company with an in-house order behind schedule often requires PH Tool to expedite their order ahead of everything else in our facility.

How does it work? 

While we are almost always able to accommodate these requests, they do require us to charge premiums in order to justify the faster service. When jobs are accepted on a Rush basis, we need to break into ongoing projects. This involves physically removing the items being machined from the Electrical Discharge Machines (EDMs) or CNC Milling Machines on which our standards are made. This breakdown is often one which has required a very careful set-up of appropriate fixtures and other tooling specific to the part being machined. Needless to say, once broken down, the bumped job needs to be set-up again. This redundancy adds time and cost to the first job which was not considered when it was priced. It is appropriate for the Rush order to bear the added cost in its pricing.

In addition to the break in setups, there is the added cost due to overtime of skilled toolmakers. Rush jobs normally require some element of after-hours machining, either late nights, weekends or holidays. The added cost in labor is at time-and-one-half, plus fringe benefits on those costs.

Finally, rush jobs require much more management involvement than more-routine orders done at the normal pace. This added coordination often occurs in advance of the order in the planning and scheduling of what needs to happen and when. Management also needs to shuffle the available skilled workers from job to job to keep everything flowing. There is also added time spent arranging timely shipping and receipt of the rush items at the correct destination(s). This may involve selecting couriers to hand-carry items, or sourcing small package carriers and over-the-road trucking companies to make pickups and deliveries long after normal business hours and on weekends/holidays.

We are pleased to offer these important services to our customers. They do come at a higher cost, however. When quoting rush services, we always offer more than one level of rush delivery, as well as the cost for normal delivery. We sincerely prefer to schedule our workload on normal, non-expedited pricing. But we have heard you all loud and clear; you want PH Tool to offer Rush services when you require them.

Do you have a rush project for us to quote? Contact our sales team today to discuss your next expedited order!