Why Your Labor Costs Are 30% Higher Than Your Competitors

2026-06-23 09:55:35

You’ve noticed that your competitors are able to offer lower prices than you while still making a healthy profit. When you analyze your costs, you discover that your labor costs per ton of production are 30% higher than the industry average. You’ve tried freezing wages, reducing benefits, and pushing your employees to work harder – but this only leads to high turnover and lower morale.

Traditional extrusion lines are incredibly labor-intensive. You need workers to manually polish dies, clean up aluminum chips, stack billets, and inspect finished products. A typical extrusion line requires 8-10 workers per shift, and finding and retaining these workers has become increasingly difficult and expensive.

Many manufacturers hesitate to invest in automation because of the upfront cost. But when you calculate the total cost of manual labor – including wages, benefits, training, turnover, and lost productivity due to human error – automation almost always pays for itself within 12-18 months.

Tongzheng’s integrated automation solutions can reduce your labor requirements by 70% or more. Our Abrasive Flow Machining system replaces 4-6 manual polishers with a single operator who can run multiple machines simultaneously. Our single Billet Sawing System automatically collects and compresses aluminum chips, eliminating the need for manual cleanup. And our Full-Servo Stacking Manipulator replaces manual billet stacking.

One of our customers was able to reduce their line staffing from 9 workers per shift to just 3 after implementing our automation solutions. This saved them over $400,000 annually in labor costs – while also increasing production output by 25%.

Automation is no longer a luxury for extrusion manufacturers – it’s a necessity. If your labor costs are higher than your competitors, you will eventually be priced out of the market. The sooner you invest in automation, the sooner you will see a return on your investment.