How We Make Thousands of Fasteners Deliver Better Engineering Outcomes

At Francis Kirk, our fasteners secure critical engineering assets across sectors as diverse as rail, construction, aeronautical, automotive, and defence.

These are exacting and complex projects, and every customer is different. So, as you’d expect, we cover all bases with a huge range of fastener variants – around 250,000 in all - from market-leading brands including Helicoil, Holo-Krome, Nord-Lock, Philidas, and Unbrako.

But whilst an extensive range of fasteners is key to meeting our customers’ demands, it’s also key to offering them options, and highlighting more effective and economical alternatives they might not have considered.

Here’s how we make that work in practice.

 

Versatility – not just variety

‘The right tool for the right job’ goes the saying, and we certainly make sure we have a comprehensive range of fasteners to cater for every possible application.

Steel, aluminium, nylon, coated, plated, hexagonal head, Allen key head, and more, our range also comes in a myriad of gauges and lengths, rated to perform every task imaginable, from fixing a warning notice on machinery to holding a jumbo jet together.

But these fasteners are also often versatile enough to be used in multiple applications. In fact, sometimes, the right tool for the right job might actually be one that is very different to what was originally envisaged.

This is down to the fact that the critical consideration in many engineering specifications tends to be the rating that the fastener is tested to. Dimensions, although clearly important, may be less decisive; a bolt that’s slightly longer or even shorter than the spec might be perfectly suitable, as long as it conforms to the ratings required for that role.

Here, variety morphs into versatility – and versatility is at the heart of the consultative, added value-focused customer engagement model that distinguishes Francis Kirk from our competitors.

Let’s explore some examples.

 

Right product, right time, right price

The process starts with discussion and education. Engineering needs are often framed as a specification, and the specification informs what your purchasers ask to buy.

But in reality, engineering needs are actually informed by desired outcomes – and we often find that discussing these with our customers points to alternative solutions, rather than the product specified on the drawing.

In short, by questioning factors like how a fastener will be used, how easy it needs to be to get at, how frequently it needs to be loosened and retightened for maintenance or disassembly, what material it butts up against, and so forth, we uncover the real engineering challenges associated with it.

This is where we can potentially identify solutions that do the job just as well, but at a keener price, or with a longer life, or at significantly lower life cost.

So, often, there’s more than one tool for the job – but it takes dialogue, technical knowledge, and close engagement with your team at an engineering level to demonstrate those possibilities – and it’s something our specialists, with their own engineering pedigree, are proud to deliver every day.

Nonetheless versatility isn’t just about choice of product – it goes further still…

 

Reengineering and creating anew

By reengineering products in innovative ways, or even creating completely bespoke solutions from scratch, we take versatility to new heights.

For example, recently, a customer requested an order of washers for use in an engineering application. But when we looked at the application in question, we identified a potentially much more cost-effective solution to which we simply needed to apply a plating to make it suitable for the job.

And this was by no means a one-off. We regularly plate or coat existing fasteners to make them suitable for use in hostile environments (offshore, for instance), or apply finishes to make them surer to handle (such as cross-hatching or stippling).

In fact, we can apply pretty much any secondary or even tertiary process to a product to meet your requirements for safety, structural integrity, and longevity. And we can do this in three to four weeks (rather than the normal industry timeline of 16 weeks), ensuring reliable continuity of your supply chain.

However, if a modification to a standard product can’t meet your need, we’ll fabricate it from scratch to your specification.

 

More than just a supplier

All these capabilities make us much more than simply a distributor. In fact, like you, we’re engineers and fabricators, too.

And this combination of an extensive product range, specialist engineering skills, and the logistics and Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) services to ensure you never run out of what you need most, makes us what we’re proud to be: your engineering partner, not just your supplier.

For more information on how our fasteners can improve your engineering outcomes, get in touch today.