The Lawton Difference: Quality and On-Time Delivery

At The C.A. Lawton Co., we are proud of the reputation our foundry has built over the last two centuries: a reputation for quality, on-time iron casting solutions alongside high-touch customer service. Through this series of blog posts, we have provided details that further reveal the “Lawton Difference” and the areas in which we excel. In this post, we’d like to highlight how Lawton provides exceptional on-time delivery while maintaining our high standard of quality our customers have come to expect.

Quality:

Lawton strives to provide its customers with the best possible product they can find, and it all starts with our Customer Advocates. As a single point of contact, our Customer Advocates know how to address the unique needs of clients. Their responsibilities include coordinating the quoting and order planning processes as well as providing each customer with a weekly status report of all their orders. Our 137 years in the business have taught us the importance of having a customer support staff involved and experienced in the operational side of the business. Additionally, accounts are always assigned so a client’s specific needs align with a customer advocate’s background—providing faster and more dynamic support.

With the help of our Customer Advocates, Lawton’s ambitiously high standards also carry over into what we create. Since 2010, Lawton has been ISO certified. This certification is based on a number of quality management principles with a customer focus. ISO requires processes that work to eliminate errors and continually improve the customer experience. Our efforts to meet these rigorous standards make us more efficient, create cost savings for customers and, most importantly, ensure a high-quality product for customers. For more information about Lawton’s quality standards, please contact our Customer Advocates.

On-Time Delivery:

Our commitment to quality continues by emphasizing on-time delivery. Lawton’s highly-trained Customer Advocates coordinating Calco’s projects are ready for surprise challenges, last-minute changes, and expedited projects.

The Calco team recently had the opportunity to showcase this unique strength over the holiday season:

A client out of Detroit had a parent company in Germany that provided all of the company’s castings before its partnership with Lawton. However, the Detroit plant had a last-minute, customer-driven design change that compromised the ship date of a large system.

There was no pattern available for the parts required, and the castings required extensive machining, annealing and painting operations to be completed, all of which added to the time required to produce the assembly-ready parts. Plus, the shipping queue from Germany added more than three weeks due to the transfers and the crossing. In addition to the obstacles above, production schedules were being affected by the holidays, and the OEM’s budget and schedule were blown out of the water.

Lawton, however, came to the Detroit OEM’s rescue, roughing out a very aggressive schedule to produce the pattern and castings. The schedule provided for a three-week ship date from the time the order was received to the shipment of raw castings to the next machining operation. The Detroit OEM placed the order, and Calco beat the compressed ship date by two days.

At Lawton, we pride ourselves in being a top tier U.S. foundry providing competitive pricing and lead times to meet our customers’ needs.  Please contact Lawton online or call 920-337-2470 for additional information or to request a quote.