NFPA Member Profile: FluiDyne Fluid Power

For decades, automotive manufacturers consolidated production, closing plants in remote locations to focus on industrial clusters in the Midwest and the South. As sales improved following the Great Recession, that compact, more-efficient production base led to big profits, but it has created some challenges as well.

“Too often auto companies rely on a single machine to produce a part,” says Nicole Farrell, sales and marketing manager for hydraulics manufacturer distributor FluiDyne Fluid Power. As production consolidated, she adds, each machine became critical. “When a hydraulic component on that machine fails, they need a quick replacement to get back up and running. Automotive manufacturers require their fluid power suppliers to have replacement components on hand or within 24 hours.”

Many of its customers focus on lean strategies that involve minimizing or even eliminating inventory, forcing FluiDyne to keep a larger and wider inventory of equipment for faster responses to emergencies.

“Our primary role is to minimize down time,” Farrell says. Typically, that means offering replacement parts when equipment fails, but increasingly, it means helping avoid failures before they occur. FluiDyne has an engineering staff that offers failure analysis for equipment and engineering support that can analyze processes.

“Our distributors provide preventative maintenance and system solutions to their customers,” Farrell says. The engineering team helps identify potential problems to inform those preventative processes. “We do not just supply a product to our customers, we also solve problems for them.”

FluiDyne Fluid Power

www.fluidynefp.com