Our approach to Partnerships

Flexi Manufacturing views strategic partnerships as an important ingredient to sustainable growth and business development which is required to gain market share. Partnerships are mutually beneficial engagements with vehicle original equipment manufacturers (OEM), the supply chain as well as the demand side of our business.

With the OEMs our partnership is a value proposition of providing a cost effective, timely delivered product that adds significant value to the OEM tractor. Whether we become a subtier supplier to the OEM or a preferred builder, our aim is to offer unique and highly innovative value added add-ons to the tractors that sets us apart from “just another body builder”

With our supply chain our approach is to develop our sub tier suppliers and become as far as possible a system integrator. This means that we invest in our sub tier suppliers and we also look here for empowerment and creation of equity from a black economic empowerment (BEE) perspective. By integrating our sub-tier suppliers with our supply chain we hope to more effectively prepare for adverse supply/demand ripples in the market that may affect delivery or pricing (for example the price of steel). This offer can then be directly translated to benefit for our customers and partners where we fit into their supply chains.

With the demand side, we engage with our customers in order to ensure as far as possible, a personal touch to the products we deliver. Flexi Manufacturing is constantly engaged in rationalising the products that are offered to the market, in order to offer greater manufacturing flexibility, better quality and reduced delivery times. This will also permit greater moves to production line orientation in its own manufacturing as opposed to job shopping. This provides for a better pricing and resource utilisation (labour, infrastructure) model, which translates to saving for our customers.

We strive to provide each customer with a product that is specifically designed to meet their requirements and to give them a competitive advantage in a highly competitive industry. We recognise that the margins particularly in the logistics industry can be very thin and any effort to improve the competitiveness of our customers will be mutually beneficial.

To this end, Flexi Manufacturing invests large amounts of money in new technologies and tools for innovation and technology development. Coupled with this methodology is to develop close relationships with the worlds leading technology creators and institutions such as Fraunhofer Gesselshaft (GmbH), GEA Grenco and universities of technologies in South Africa and Abroad. This widens or exposure to world-class technologies, allows us to translate it into the South African and African environment and roll out innovative solutions to cater to the needs and requirements of our customers. This methodology has proven highly effective in the development of a new hazardous chemical tanker with increase payload potential of 10%, new composite flat decks, new tipper designs with increase payload potential and new pantech designs with an extra palette stack.