OEMs (original equipment manufacturers—those that have their own products) depend on a supply chain to provide them with the goods and services they require to produce their goods. This chain may include a company that provides steel bending including the curving of steel angles, bars, beams, tees, pipe and tubing—a bender/roller. For a variety of reasons, the bender/roller often links to—is the supplier to—a steel service center who provides the steel and fabrication to the end customer or to a supplier of the end customer.
Steel service centers often develop a symbiotic relationship with bender/rollers where they support each other. The steel service center usually provides steel to OEMs so it has access to discuss selling fabrication along with steel to an OEM. Bender/rollers often do not have that access. Service centers often have dozens of salespersons seeking business. Bender/rollers do not have such a sales force. OEMs more and more are looking to reduce their supplier base so they prefer to buy labor and material from a service center rather than from both a service center and a bender/roller.
Steel service centers often do first-stage processing: cutting, burning, shearing, etc. But they do not do such specialized work and bending and rolling structural steel, sheet and plate. They leave that to the experts. A steel service center can add value to the steel it sells to an OEM by adding the bending and rolling.
OEMs want to have others maintain and manage an inventory of their parts. Steel service centers often collaborate with bender/rollers to provide not only an inventory of parts for the OEM but also quick turn around on unexpected spikes in the OEM’s demand. OEMs want to simplify the whole transactional process from order entry to billing and like sourcing from a single supplier.
Finally, steel service centers often have quality certifications required by OEMs but not held by bender/rollers. Steel service centers can provide the needed certifications for the labor on labor-and-material work.
