March, 2025- Businesses always are looking to improve productivity and reduce costs to achieve higher margins. This is even more important today since margins were squeezed during the COVID-19 pandemic and the inflation that followed. And potential tariffs by the new administration throw another wild card into the mix.
Device Technologies (DTi) develops wire protection solutions. As part of its continuous improvement program, the company developed a case study to analyze the process OEMs use to install wire protection nylon grommets with adhesive and compare it to a no-adhesive option.
DTi’s grommet edging snaps on with finger pressure, cutting total install costs
TIME IS MONEY
The labor cost for applying a nylon grommet with adhesive far exceeds the unit cost of the nylon strip and offers OEMs opportunities to save time and money. Many OEMs manufacture some type of box-shaped enclosure, and within almost all of these boxes is wiring for data and power that has to be protected. That wiring frequently crosses an edge, and wherever wires cross a metal, composite or even a wood edge, wiring protection is needed to prevent wire abrasion that could cause power or data flow outages.
Metal fabricators often create these boxes for OEMs and offer value added services like finishing, assembly, machining, specialized coatings or adding wire protection.
OPERATIONAL CHALLENGE
For decades, OEMs have used a nylon grommet and an adhesive to provide protection to the wires. However the adhesive application is a non-standard task, and the gluing process adds steps: prepping, cleaning, gluing, fixturing, curing and cleanup. Worse still, the process creates high levels of rework because nylon’s natural stiffness and coil set make it pull away from edges despite the adhesive and fixturing.
Roll forming all edges is a clear but very expensive solution to edge abrasion. Few OEMs want to go down that road. The legacy choice has been to use grommets made from flexible materials like nylon, polyethylene and or polytetrafl uoroethylene (Teflon).
However, the one significant drawback to almost all these solutions is that they have no intrinsic retentive strength, and OEMs have to use an adhesive to secure them to the edge to ensure wire protection.
DTi’s grommet edging does not require an adhesive. It has a polymer encapsulated metal substrate with castles (crenellation) that provide strong edge retention and are applied with simple finger pressure.
IN-OPERATION COMPARISON
DTi worked with manufacturers who were open to a time-and-cost review of their current grommet methodology compared with the metal substrate non-adhesive option. Each step in the process was timed. Below is a summary of the findings. Nylon and adhesive: A nylon grommet and its required adhesive requires 12 steps: Batch set up, measure/cut to fit, trimming, deburr the edge, clean the edge, cut masking tape for fixturing, apply adhesive, apply the grommet, apply masking tape, cure time, remove masking tape and clean up, and inspect fit and finish. The total labor time for the above is 70 minutes.
Clients indicated that a curing break is at least 45 minutes as techs have to stop, go to new jobs and return. However, the cost impact is zero because techs charge their time to other jobs. Non-adhesive option: The encapsulated metal grommet has six steps: batch setup, measure/cut to fit, trimming, optional edge clean, apply the grommet, and inspect fit and finish. Total labor time: 7.4 minutes.
PRODUCTIVITY GAIN
Compared with the 70 minutes for nylon, encapsulated metal’s 7.4 minutes represent a 950 percent gain in productivity. At a $60-per hour shop labor rate, the costs with materials equal $25.35 for nylon and $10.40 for encapsulated metal a 59 percent cost savings.
Productivity/savings will depend on each manufacturing process and shop labor rate. However, the metal encapsulated grommet saves significant time and money, giving OEMs and fabricators a real option to improve productivity and margins.
Device Technologies Inc., devicetech.com.
