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Month: February 2022
Driving Improvements with Data: How a PMPA Member Saved $1.4M in 11 Months
Join Mitotec General Manager, Clinton Pouillie and Operations Manager, Bob Fourtounis as they discuss how Amper’s factory operating system helped them save $1.4M in 11 months. In this 30-minute session, you’ll learn how they used utilization and downtime data to drive improvement projects, best practices for operator adoption and get a sneak peak of the Amper system. Facilitated by Amper’s Director of Customer Success and Six Sigma Black Belt, Allison Heil, this is one conversation you don’t want to miss!
Verifyle Pro and Its Practical Uses For Security-Conscious PMPA Members
Learn how to put Verifyle’s ultra-secure messaging, document sharing and storage, and electronic signatures to use for your business. This proven and easy-to-use PMPA benefit will increase the security of your communications while raising your sense of awareness about what’s occurring on the receiving side of your communication. Get started at no-charge.
Presenter: Dana Shibley, Vice President
Dana Shibley has been involved with establishing and communicating frameworks for risk assessment and management since the beginning of his career. He began at Royal Bank of Canada where he worked with banks and corporations around the globe hedging financial interest rate risk and currency risk. Later, he wrestled with risk of a different flavor as he worked with technology companies in the protection and monetization of intellectual property, where risk-tradeoffs of potential and actual litigation around that intellectual property are constant strategic considerations.
Dana currently serves as Vice President for Verifyle, in Silicon Valley, which leverages patented encryption key management technology to isolate information risk at a granular level and stop the devastating bulk-access-vulnerability that threatens organizations and individuals today.
Dana holds an MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
February 2021
Craftsman’s Cribsheet #103
Computer numerical control (CNC) machining is one of the most versatile manufacturing methods, capable of producing parts and components with dimensional accuracy and complex geometries in varying quantities from a wide range of metallic and nonmetallic materials.
MARKET INSIGHT – Machine Tool Manufacturing
NACIS 333517 | $8,414,504,000
by Joe Jackson
Marketing & Events Assistant, PMPA
Published February 1, 2022
The parts that our precision machining shops manufacture provide essential functionality to many farming, metalworking, milling, grinding, and drilling machines that we use in our industry to make the critical parts that make a difference.
Top 5 Companies
- Gleason Corporation., NY
- Hypertherm Inc., NH
- Dmg Mori USA Inc., IL
- Hardinge Inc., NY
- Trumpf Inc., CT
- Our precision turned products manufacturing industry’s sales are 2.5 times that of the machine tool manufacturing industry.
- The machine tool manufacturing industry is one of the least concentrated markets we serve. Of the 1,309 companies verified in this NAICS Code, the top 5 companies make up 26% sales in this industry.
- At minimum, 14% of the sales in the machine tool manufacturing industry comes out of New York. The northeastern seaboard is a concentrated hub for machine tool manufacturing.
- The machine tool manufacturing industry spends roughly $3 billion on Materials, Components, Supplies, Minerals and Machinery.
- If precision turned products are only 1% of this industry’s spending, that would equate to $30 million in sales opportunity in NAICS 333517 for our precision machining shops.
Source: U.S. Census, NAICS.com
A New Year Resolution for Your Business
Need a New Year resolution that will help your business, productivity and hiring practices? Create or review your company’s mission statement, vision statement and core values.
by Carli Kistler-Miller
Director of Programs & Marketing, PMPA
Published February 1, 2022
Show of hands…how many have made and dropped their New Year resolution at this point? I’ll put my hand down now so I can keep typing. It’s February, and the best of intentions can get lost in the reality of daily life. However, making a resolution to review your company’s mission, vision and core values can positively affect your daily business life, the productivity of your employees and make hiring easier.
Mission Statement
Mission statements are essential. They explain what you do and why you do it. Mission statements are the company’s purpose for existing. While it’s easy to think, “our mission is to make money,” that isn’t true. Money is a result of your mission. Why does your company exist? It’s a simple question that results with a simple statement after lots and lots of thought. Our mission at the Precision Machining Products Association (PMPA)is to lead progressive members to sustainable success (why we do it) with reliable and relevant information, resources, advocacy and networking opportunities (what we do). That statement drives every decision we make. Whether it is a new idea, deliverable or benefit, we ask ourselves if it fits our mission statement. A mission statement makes it easier for you and your employees to make decisions and help keep everyone focused.
Vision Statement
A vision statement differs from a mission statement in that a vision statement is forward-thinking — a vision for the future — usually for the next three to five years. PMPA’s vision statement is to be the premier association that enables our members to adapt and thrive while advocating for the success of our industry. This is who we aim to be. This statement also drives decision-making. As visions change for a company, the statement should be updated, whereas a mission statement is generally unchanged unless the scope of the business has changed dramatically.
Read: ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ Working with Precision Turned Parts
Core Values
What are your company’s core values? The answer to this question can help with decision-making for hiring, strategy, training, company culture and overall employee behaviors. Does your company value integrity, teamwork, innovation, humility, customer commitment, inclusion, curiosity, continuous improvement or accountability? The list of values is long (I only mentioned a few), so it is important to take some time considering them.
Once your core values have been determined, turn them into actionable values. For example, at PMPA, we value member service. An actionable value could be “We take care of our members with concierge service.” That core value tells members what to expect and staff exactly how to take care of members. Emails are answered quickly. Phone calls are answered by humans who genuinely want to help. PMPA staff knows they are allowed to take the time needed to handle member requests, concerns and needs. The value isn’t placed on how many members are served, but how the members are served.
If your company has a mission statement, vision statement and core values, I encourage you to revisit them and make sure they reflect your current company. If you do not have these essential statements, it’s time to develop them.
Author
Carli Kistler-Miller, MBA has over 25 years of experience with
communications, event/meeting planning, marketing, writing and
operations. Email: gro.apmp@rellimc — Website: pmpa.org.
5-S: Ask a Toolmaker
A place for everything and everything in its place. A visit to Fischer Special Tooling during PMPA’s Mastery Program provided a glowing example of the 5-Ss: Sorting, Setting in order, Shine, Standardize and Sustain.
by Miles Free
Director of Industry Research and Technology, PMPA
Published February 1, 2022
One of the most despised statements that I heard when I first entered the workforce was “Do as I say. Not as I do.” Did I mention despised? What kind of leadership is that?
PMPA’s Mastery Program visited Fischer Special Tooling in Mentor, Ohio, to see the process by which their special tools come to life. Little did we know that we would also get a real-life, in-person demonstration of how 5-S, housekeeping, standard work and other cultural best practices knit together to expedite production of sophisticated tools (the toolmakers’ tolerances are typically one tenth of ours.)
5-S: A Place for Everything and Everything in its Place.
And so much more. One of the biggest problems that we as manufacturers deal with daily is variation and variability. With variation comes differences, and with differences come opportunities to fail or fail to meet tolerances. Rejection! Using standard methods or standard work is one way to reduce variation and process variability. Many of us see standard work as the means of managing an overall process. But 5-S is standard work for ordering our workplaces. If our workplaces are standardized, that reduces the opportunity for unwanted variation.
5-S is more than just organizing our tools. It is a means to ensure that our tools are, in fact, suitable for use — clean and in good repair, calibrated if necessary and in the location where we expect them to be. When we need them, they’ll be there. This reduces nonproductive time, the waste of waiting and, by having the right tool at the right place at the right time, ensures that our adjustments and methods are standard across shifts, days and crews.
Reducing variability is key to holding tight tolerances. 5-S is an important part of that achievement. But 5-S is more than just Sorting (a place for everything) and Setting in order (and everything in its place), Shine, Standardize and Sustain are the final three “S’s” and the photo shows how the team at Fischer achieves these.
Shine. The photo above is straight off a smartphone — no editing. The yellow handles of the T wrenches at the bottom show some evidence of use, but are not grimy or covered with sludge. The pegboard must certainly be contacted
many times a day by workers’ hands and yet appears clean and bright. Look how bright. How clean. Shine is captured honestly by the lens. This workplace is convicted of “shine.”
Standardize. This is the process by which everything stays in its place. In many shops, they paint a shadow in the shape of the tool to provide a visual reminder of what belongs in the space. At Fischer, they made visual photos showing which tool belongs where on the cart. This sets the standard and shows everyone — even a visitor from a trade association office — where to replace the item taken from the cart. Standards documented are standards held.
Sustain. Again, in this photo, a photo is being used to document the contents of the cart and the location of each item. If you look closely, you can see that there is also a photo on the other side of the cart — it shows which tools belong where on the other side of the cart. This visual means/record of what is on the cart and what belongs where provides a powerful reminder to all to replace any items removed where they belong.
Magic. The clean, bare, light wood surface on the rolling tool drawer unit to the left of this photo is “magic” to my eyes. In my life experience, horizontal surfaces are provided as a place to put “stuff.” In many shops, we typically find shop rags — typically soiled — collections of partially or completely used up carbide inserts and a myriad of shop flotsam and jetsam that washes up on the nearest horizontal surface.
In this shop, a place for everything and everything in its place means that everything — even the random rags and tool inserts and other debris — are actually where they should be and achieving their own highest and best use by being located where they are supposed to be.
If you ever wondered how it is that the toolmakers that provide your tools are able to work to tolerances that are just a tenth of the ones that you struggle to hold all day in difficult material — well, the answer might be the magic of having clean, bright, horizontal uncluttered surfaces. Standard work for tool storage. And a culture of care that sustains these techniques.
Author
Miles Free III is the PMPADirector of Industry Affairs with over 40 years of experience in the areas of manufacturing, quality, and steelmaking. He helps answer “How?, “With what?” and “Really?” Miles’ blog is at pmpaspeakingofprecision.com; email – gro.apmp@eerfm; website – pmpa.org