Building Gunwerks | Vertical Integration - YouTube

Gunwerks is on a mission to vertically  integrate its manufacturing so that we  

can control quality lead times and cost  and provide a better value to our customer  

so the three main things that make up a rifle  system are the stock the receiver and the barrel  

so our big focus on vertical integration is  bringing the machines in the process in-house  

that will allow us to make those parts from raw  material so the first product here I want to  

show you is receivers so we've got a couple  machines here that are making the different  

parts the receivers the bolts the bolt heads etc  and what we do is we we feed a bar of material  

in this case aluminum into this machine and  then it spits out a finished product at the end  

so to us that that gives us the control over you  know what configuration we want how many we want  

to put on the shelf um what what the lead time is  for the manufacturing process and we can also work  

on our system and until we're sick of working  on our system but we can make it so the quality  

is exceptional and that's really what our big goal  here is with Gunwerks vertical integration efforts  

is to get control of quality and then lead time  a second so let's go check out the next process  

hey the next process i want to show you is really  really cool we've been working on this for a lot  

of years to get the intellectual property the  tools machines the process everything dialed  

in that's barrel manufacturing the barrel is  absolutely the most important part of a rifle  

system when it comes to precision and accuracy  so we're looking to control dimensions that are  

tens of thousands or less of an inch in the  manufacturing of a barrel system and leaving  

that outside leaving it to somebody else is  a big hope that sometimes doesn't always pay  

off so what we've done here is we've landed the  machines and we've built the processes to take a  

kind of a solid chunk of steel here we always  do stainless steel but you take this piece of  

stainless steel we'll chop it off we'll put our  chamfers on it and then the next step that we do  

over here in this machine is we'll drill and ream  the holes so this machine is called a gun drill  

and it will it will drill a hole that will be sub  thousandths of an inch of run out per inch and so  

you get a 24 inch piece it will be very straight  so you drill it you ream it and then we have a  

home machine over here that lets us control that  final bore dimension to a tenth of a thousandth of  

an inch it's amazing how awesome these machines  work at the processes we've developed to get  

the most out of these machines and then from  there the barrel goes onto the rifling station  

and we'll cut the rifling and then we lap and  then we have a turning station there and then  

we always do our carbon fiber in the composite  room but the total vertical integration of a  

barrel gives us the absolute control over quality  which yields a rifle system that works every time  

and really importantly it gives us the barrel that  we want when we need it we have so many iterations  

and SKU's and configurations of rifle system to  stock all of those parts would be a monster so  

that's one of the unique things about Gunwerks is  you can get whatever you want how you want it and  

our lead times are short enough you can almost get  it when you want let's go check out rifle stocks

So this is our clean room this  is the nicest room in the whole  

shop these guys keep it about 65  degrees in here it's kind of chilly  

um so what we're doing here is we're doing  stock layup this has been something we've  

been doing for about six years the reason why we  vertically integrated on stocks was we would put  

an order in for a rifle stock and it would take  12 months sometimes to get that rifle stock back  

and so we would have to forecast 12 months in  advance what we were going to sell for rifle  

systems it was impossible it was not a good  system we would we would just have racks and  

racks and racks of inventory that we we would try  to keep on the shelf so the main goal that we had  

in integrating rifle stocks into the manufacturing  was to get control of the the lead times and so  

now instead of 12 months it takes us about 12  days from start to finish to have a stock ready  

to go into arrival it's a lot faster delivery time  and the raw materials are easy to get a hold of  

that was number one the second thing that we  found was when we in we designed the new clymr  

and magnus systems uh we have some shapes in those  stocks that are that are very sharp sharp edges  

going to curving flowing lines and we weren't  able to get the type of quality that we wanted  

from other supply and so a secondary thing for  us was to develop a process that allowed us to do  

those type of transitions and shapes and features  on a rifle stocks not only so it was functional  

but also very elegant as well so that that drove  us to do this vertical integration as well so  

these guys do an awesome job of laying up a rifle  stock we'll lay them up we'll cook them and then  

we'll push them all on through and machine then  specifically to the gun build that you want  

and the the process is really cool but again the  cost for us here in this situation wasn't a factor  

it was more the quality and the throughput in fact  it's kind of a funny story a lot of manufacturing  

shops don't know how to fully burden the cost  of their products and we spent a lot of time  

in the accounting to understand what our product  costs are it costs us more money to make a stock  

in-house than what it cost us to buy one in the  old days so sometimes the cost factor doesn't  

really pan out but in general you know we're  looking at a three to five year payoff on the  

investment of the machines and the process so we  do have to have cost savings but that cost savings  

allows us to to make the capital investments and  the capital purchases to expand and to grow and  

really where we're trying to provide the benefit  to our customer is in quality and lead time

okay so what does vertical  integration mean for you the customer  

essentially you're going to get a  really great product from Gunwerks  

we're going to be able to build products  in stock ready to ship or custom make to  

order products and deliver in just a couple  months that's kind of a big deal in this space  

and we're going to do it with the traditional  quality that you've come to expect from Gunwerks