How to Solve Your OEM Lead Time Headaches

It’s a simple fact of business that no matter how streamlined you can get your supply chain, hiccups are going to happen. Even the OEMs you have the closest relationships with will encounter delays that are out of their control.

When that happens, the consequences can be costly—not just to your bottom line, but also to your ability to meet the needs of your customers.

What causes OEM delays? Some of the most common culprits include:

• Severe weather events
• International incidents
• Resource shortages
• Natural disasters
• Disagreements between nations

Occasionally, disruptions can come from a surprising source.

For example, when Bitcoin exploded in popularity,  the prices of GPUs not only skyrocketed, but manufacturers struggled to keep up with demand. The reason: cryptocurrency miners found that high-end graphics cards provided by companies like AMD and Nvidia worked best for mining.

Avoiding the OEM delay pain points

While disruptions are unavoidable, there are ways for enterprises to mitigate the headaches they cause.

At Redapt, we’ve developed what we call the Ready Ship Program in order to take the burden off of enterprises when it comes to deploying new infrastructure.

Here’s how it works:

	1. Through regular communication, we help an enterprise forecast their hardware needs
	2. Once this forecast is completed, we work with our supply chains and OEMs to procure all the necessary equipment and components with an expansive lead time
	3. All equipment is shipped to our facilities, where it is stored until its scheduled deployment
	4. Before deployment, we fully assemble and test the hardware, integrate software, and handle things like cabling and labeling
	5. The new hardware is shipped to its destination ready for deployment and, if need be, members of our team are there to meet it and oversee installation

Not only does this process greatly streamline the procurement, assembly, and deployment of new infrastructure, but it also helps our clients navigate the troubled waters of OEM and supply chain disruptions since lead times are taken into account well in advance.

In addition, should a major disruption occur and some components are behind schedule, all hardware is stored at our facilities to alleviate the expense of the customer finding a storage solution on their own.

The Ready Ship program at work

For an example of how our process helps an enterprise maintain stability during a crisis, let’s look at our work with a client during the initial outbreak of COVID-19.

One of the industries greatly affected by the pandemic was video conferencing. Providers of the service struggled to keep up with the sudden increase in demand as entire corporations shifted to remote work overnight.

Through our Ready Ship program, we were able to help one of the major video conferencing providers rapidly scale their infrastructure even as supply chains and OEMs greatly reduced their operations.

While finding equipment and components was a challenge, our streamlined process—and ability to quickly assemble and test hardware as it arrived—helped our client scale at a pace that kept its services from buckling during such a dramatic increase in usage.

Obviously, recent events have been unprecedented.

But even during normal times, when smaller disruptions and breakdowns still regularly occur, the speed and flexibility our Ready Ship program provides can help stop OEM and supply chain headaches before they become migraines.

To learn more about the Ready Ship program, visit our Rack Integration Services page.

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