The Benefits of Working with a Malaysian Stainless Steel Fabricator

A buyer comparing a Penang workshop with one overseas is rarely asking whether stainless steel can be cut and welded, because they already know that it can. What they want to know is what happens when a frame must bolt to steel that is already standing in a Kulim plant. The drawing was right on the day it was issued, but the steel on site has ended up slightly somewhere else. So the first piece arrives, the holes do not meet, and a fitter marks up the drawing while everyone else waits.

That marked-up drawing is where the real difference between the two workshops appears. What happens to it next depends on where the workshop is.

Who should manage the whole sequence, from drawing to assembly, is a separate question, and it is set out in single-source fabrication. Read that article if the cutting, the bending and the welding are still split between different suppliers. This article assumes you may keep the work in one building, and asks what changes because that building is in Malaysia.

The main benefit is a faster correction

The cost to the programme is not the stainless steel. The installers are already on site, and the steelwork or the equipment is already in place. So when the holes do not meet, the rest of the job stops. Someone has to work out whether the drawing was wrong, the site moved, or the part was cut to an old revision. That decision usually needs only a few sentences written on the marked-up drawing. Making a new piece from those sentences is the slow part.

An overseas workshop makes that part slower still. The part, or a photograph and a revised file, has to go back to a workshop whose working day may barely overlap with yours. Then a replacement is cut, packed, shipped and quite often held in customs. By the time it arrives, a hole that did not line up has cost a week that was never in the programme.

Penang is one hour behind Korea and on the same time as Singapore, so a question asked in the morning can be answered the same day. That gives you a shorter conversation. It is not a promise that the part will be remade before lunch.

TH Steel was established in 1977, and the workshop is in Bayan Lepas. Buyers who can visit are welcome to ask for a time. Buyers who cannot visit should ask for photographs of work that resembles theirs, together with a plain account of the jobs the workshop will not take on.

One shipment instead of several

Freight is not only the last journey to site. A bracket that is laser-cut in one country, bent in a second and polished in a third has travelled three times before anyone on your project sees it. Each of those trips adds a queue and a packing risk. There is also the chance that the note about the finish never arrived with the cut blanks, which are the flat pieces cut from the sheet. So you pay for the movement itself, and also for the days the part spends between buildings.

A workshop that cuts, forms, machines, welds, finishes and assembles under one roof ships the finished part once. Who is responsible for the fit between the cut edge and the weld is the subject of the single-source fabrication article. If you are comparing a Penang quote with a chain of separate suppliers, read both articles, because the country and the number of suppliers are separate decisions.

Every move between suppliers adds a queue, a packing risk and a chance that an instruction is lost.

Close to the plants that use the parts

Penang and Kulim are where a large share of Malaysia’s semiconductor and electronics manufacturing is based. The brackets, frames, enclosures, guards and fixtures for those plants are often small, so the steel itself is a modest line on the quote. The cost of a delay is not modest. A part that misses a planned shutdown, or arrives after the installers have moved to the next bay, costs more than another crate of stainless steel.

Making the part in Penang puts the workshop close to the site where that delay happens. A fitter can mark up a drawing in the afternoon, and the workshop can see it the same day. Whether the next piece is ready the following day still depends on the job, the material and the other work in the workshop. The gain is that the conversation can start at once, without first waiting for a workshop in another country.

The same reasoning applies if you are in Korea or Singapore. You may be buying for a plant in northern Malaysia, or you may want the parts made here and shipped to you. In the first case, the workshop is near the site. In the second, you still have one supplier and one finished shipment, rather than a chain of separate process companies you cannot visit. The pages for those enquiries are stainless fabrication for facilities in Penang and Kulim and contract fabrication for Korean manufacturers.

Neither page means that TH Steel is a nominated supplier to a named plant, or that it is on a government list. If you need that status, ask us directly, and we will give you a direct answer rather than leave you to assume it from our location.

Ask who does each step of the work

Before you treat “Malaysia” as the benefit, ask four plain questions.

• Which steps stay in the building? Cutting, forming, machining, welding, finishing and assembly. If a supplier does the laser cutting but cannot say who does the polishing, the job is still split between suppliers, even if they are all local.
• Who sees the marked-up drawing? If the correction goes to a subcontractor you will never meet, you have the same delay as with an overseas workshop, only shorter.
• Can they show a part like yours? Photographs of a similar frame, enclosure or handrail tell you more than a list of machines. If they have not made that kind of part, they should say so.
• Is the quote for the finished part? A price for the cut blanks, with finishing “to be confirmed”, is not a price for the part you will install.

TH Steel’s answer to the first question is that all of these steps happen in the Bayan Lepas workshop. The processes there are computer numerical control (CNC) laser cutting, water jet cutting, milling and turning, tube and plate bending, welding, finishing and assembly. That is the comparison worth making. A supplier who matches only the country, and not the list of processes, has not offered you the benefit this article describes.

Ask the difficult question too: what will you not do? A workshop that can describe the jobs it should decline is easier to trust than one that agrees to every drawing in the first email.

What a local address does not replace

A Penang address does not supply a missing grade, thickness, quantity or finish, and it does not make an incomplete drawing ready to quote. What to send is set out in what a fabricator needs to quote: the drawing, the material, the finish, the quantity, and where the part will be used.

Three more facts change how we plan the job, and they matter more than the country named on the enquiry. Please include them:

• Whether the drawing is final: if you already know the drawing may change after the first piece, say so in the first email. We plan a trial piece differently from a final batch, but only when we know which of the two it is.
• The destination: if the parts must leave Malaysia, tell us where they are going. We will talk through how to support that shipment, because a crate for a site in Penang and a crate for another country are not the same job.
• Whether you need to visit: tell us if you want to see the workshop before or during the job.

Price is where buyers most often choose the wrong workshop. If you look only at the stainless steel, a part made here can look more expensive or cheaper than an imported one. The number that matters is the whole cost: the quote, the first piece, the correction, and freight that you pay once rather than between suppliers.

So put the two quotes side by side, and add the things that are not written on them. Who do you call when the holes do not line up? How many times does the part move before it is finished? Can you see a photograph of the first piece before the rest are made? If the cheaper quote cannot answer those questions, it is not the cheaper job.