The steel industry is no different from so many others in that capacity and labor shortages are making everything more difficult. Specifically in steel, it’s harder to get materials and products and especially harder to get them quickly as lead times are increasing with each part of the process facing capacity and labor shortages.

Still, these are merely challenges rather than impossibilities. At Capital Steel, we’re increasing our efforts to make sure these shortages have the least possible impact on you. By committing to internal efficiency and through additional efforts directly with you, we’re minimizing the difficulties caused by capacity and labor shortages.

Keeping Things Moving Internally

To keep things predictable, reliable, and efficient within Capital Steel, we’re undertaking three main initiatives to make sure our company runs smoothly and, in turn, our customers know what to expect.

Extended forecasting: with long-term planning in close communication with customers, we’re ordering materials well in advance of when we might’ve been doing so just a year or two ago. By getting ahead of the extra-long lead times, we’re working to ensurethe materials arrive as closely as possible to each customer’s specific long-term plan, whether that’s six, nine, or 12+ months out.

Leveraging supplier relationships with steel producers: over the course of more than two decades, we’ve built a lot of quality relationships with suppliers. With lead times now being longer throughout the entire process, leveraging our supplier relationships helps to keep our orders coming in when we expect them to.

Keeping staff happy and healthy: people want to work at Capital Steel and we want to keep it that way. When our staff is happy, healthy, and motivated to come to work, productivity naturally increases and any disruptions to order processing are minimized with our full staff working hard every day.

Keeping Things Moving for Our Customers

A lot of what we’re doing internally directly impacts how we’re able to create a smooth experience for you, but there’s more.

Committing to extended forecasting: we support our customers like you and are willing to walk alongside you as you recognize the need to adopt extended forecasting due to longer and longer lead times. Partnering on forecasting helps ensure materials and products can be delivered when you need them, so you can continue to meet the needs of your customers.

Strengthening our strategic partnership: yes, we here at Capital Steel will gladly take your order, but we want to be of service and of value to you, so we encourage you to lean on us as a strategic partner. When we work closely with our customers and help develop and adhere to long-term plans, everything is more efficient for everyone. We know steel and we know the challenges those who work with steel commonly face. Put our knowledge and expertise to use and you’ll get a better product, process, or other improvement out of it.

Diversifying the supply base: part of being a strategic partner is helping our customers diversify their supply base, which gives us more options when ordering materials. This, along with long-term planning, helps us keep everything moving and arriving when it’s needed.

Everyone is facing difficulties with capacity and labor, but with our commitment to face these challenges strategically, we’re minimizing the impact on our customers.