Recorded:
April 17, 2023 at National Technical Conference in Cleveland, OH.

Speakers:
Martin Baumgardner, Precision Plus, Inc.
Michael Devoss, Marcegaglia Stainless Richburg, LLC
Johnny Freeze, GWS Tool Group
Ron Herrera, Erie Specialty Products, Inc.
Ray Schnell, Valbruna Stainless Inc.

Who would benefit: Middle Management, Setup, Machinists, Estimators, Engineers, Foremen, Leadmen, Operators, Quality

Experience track: Fund Mastery

Description
Learn to reduce risk of bad parts, complicated setups, time spent on checking/gaging and simplify the quality process. Rethink tooling and make the process work for you.

 

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$95 for PMPA Members who did not attend.

ACCESS TO DESIGNING TOOLS FOR QUALITY

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Recorded:
April 17, 2023 at National Technical Conference in Cleveland, OH.

Speakers:
John Kiffner, GWS Tool Group
Clive Komlenic, Mikron Tool

Who would benefit: Upper & Middle Management, Setup, Machinists, Estimators, Engineers, Foremen, Leadmen, Operators

Experience track: Mastery

Description
This session focuses on fundamentals of Swiss — type machining, the capabilities that set Swiss apart from standard lathes, and common misunderstandings when transitioning from standard lathe machining to Swiss machining.

 

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ACCESS TO ID ISSUES: DRILLING

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Recorded:
April 16, 2023 at National Technical Conference in Cleveland, OH.

Speakers:
Ed Jones, Hangsterfer’s Laboratories
Joe Gentile, PMPA
Miles Free III, PMPA

Who would benefit: Upper & Middle Management, Setup, Machinists, Estimators, Engineers, Foremen, Leadmen, Operators

Experience track: Mastery

Description
This session focuses on fundamentals of Swiss — type machining, the capabilities that set Swiss apart from standard lathes, and common misunderstandings when transitioning from standard lathe machining to Swiss machining.

 

ACCESS
Access grants unlimited online streaming.  Copyright PMPA 2023.  May not be distributed or copied.  May be used for training of member employee personnel.

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$95 for PMPA Members who did not attend.

ACCESS TO OIL VS COOLANT

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Recorded:
April 17, 2023 at National Technical Conference in Cleveland, OH.

Speaker:
Derek Briggs, Tsugami America

Who would benefit: Setup, Machinists, Estimators, Engineers, Foremen, Leadmen, Operators

Experience track: Mastery

Description
This session focuses on fundamentals of Swiss — type machining, the capabilities that set Swiss apart from standard lathes, and common misunderstandings when transitioning from standard lathe machining to Swiss machining.

 

ACCESS
Access grants unlimited online streaming.  Copyright PMPA 2023.  May not be distributed or copied.  May be used for training of member employee personnel.

Free for NTC 2023 Attendees*

$95 for PMPA Members who did not attend.

ACCESS TO CNC SWISS INTERMEDIATE

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CCAT Programs – April 2023

PMPA Presentation Feb 1, 2023

 

Courtesy of Eileen Candels, Director of Partnerships at Connecticut Center for Adanced Technology, Inc.

Here are some handy CCAT links for everyone’s  consideration or share:

Money for Manufacturing Grant Programs– includes all the grants I discussed, with FAQs and applications.  Paul Striebel heads up those programs, and his email should you have questions after you have explored the grant nuances is: su.tacc@lebeirtsp.

Industry 4.0 Technology Demo Requests – to have our engineers help you explore and prototype emerging tech to solve your challenges

Tour your ATC – 3/1 Sign up – if you were impressed, or missed the tour, join us on 3/1, and refer friends!

4/4 MET Career Fair, Quinnipiac, Employer Sign Up – FREE to Employers and attendees, focused on college students interested in Manufacturing Engineering or Technology jobs, Tuesday 4/4, 3-6 PM

Participate in Internship Program – wage subsidy match up to $7000 for qualified employers and interns for Summer 2023

 

 

 

 

Overall Organizational Effectiveness in Machining Shops: How Do You Know? 

Sales are great! I think. How do you know unless you can compare to your peers?  PMPA’s Business Trends Report can help.

by Miles Free III

Director of Industry Affairs, PMPA

Published November 1, 2022

I attended IMTS 2022 in Chicago, IL, and one of the most vivid sights for me was an entire hall filled with hundreds of vendors supplying various Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) software, dashboards and machine monitoring/reporting technologies. An entire hall! OEE shows you the performance of your operations, compared to their available potential — but nothing about your position and performance relative to the market, and your competitors.

Where can you go to get credible and authoritative information to use to evaluate your organization’s performance in the market, your industry and the broad economy? Today’s world is characterized by Volatility (e.g., the price of energy), Uncertainty (e.g., the availability of critical raw materials), Complexity (e.g., the latest revisions on tax and depreciation rules) and Ambiguity (e.g., is it still a pandemic? Endemic? Is it over?). In such a VUCA world, you need a trustworthy resource that gives you a credible means to know where you stand in regard to the broad issues in which you operate. You need information that is curated to be appropriate to your niche, which provides actionable understanding of performance relative to your peers. Where do you go to get trusted data to benchmark your organization’s performance?

 

PMPA – Effective Associating Means Sharing Actionable Data for the Good of the Industry

PMPA is a 501(c)6 trade association, referred to as a “business league” under the IRS code. “A business league’s activities must be devoted to improving business conditions of one or more lines of business…they direct their efforts at promoting the common economic interests of all commercial enterprises in a trade or community.” bit.ly/PMPA-PM1122

At PMPA, our mission statement challenges us to progressively lead members to sustainable success with reliable and relevant information, resources, advocacy and networking opportunities. Among our many informational deliverables — which include economic updates, annual wage surveys and reports — is our Monthly Business Trends Report. Our Business Trends Report consolidates the (confidentially submitted) sales and hours of first shift scheduled data from about 35% of our manufacturing membership. In addition, we track four sentiment indicators for the next three-months for outlook for sales, lead times, employment and profitability. Because our reporting shops are all precision turned products shops, NAICS 332721, the inferences that our reporting gives us is focused and accurate — and a suitable standard for benchmarking your shop’s experience.

Our shops performance in the short term does not correlate well with broader indicators like Industrial Production, Manufacturing Output, Durable Goods, or GDP. In fact, over the past year, our shops have often outperformed most of these indicators. However, because of the shared processes, customers, markets, suppliers, scale, scope and capabilities common to all of our precision machining shops, the aggregation and sharing of our collective data leads us to discover “the wisdom of the crowd.” Our monthly cadence helps you to compare your shop’s sales and scheduled overtime performance to that of your “comparable peers.” Similarly, you can compare the outlook that you have for the next three months with that of your peers/competitors. What are you missing? What are they seeing? Is there a gap?

 

How Do You Know?

Here are three potential situations in any given month for your shop’s sales performance:

  • Your sales came in double digit percent higher last month. Was it due to good sales by your organization? Was it because you needlessly discounted? Was it due to the economy?
  • Your sales dropped double digit sales percent last month compared to prior month. Much lower than the economy.
  • Your sales came in up double-digit percent higher than last month. What can we expect for next month?

This past year, as of August, all eight month’s Business Trends sales came in at higher levels than the 2021 calendar year average. Despite two major declines March at 181 to April at 156 (a 13.8% drop) June at 175 to July to 154 (a 12% drop), our shops had confidence that they were outperforming. Our sentiment indicators showed that outlooks for lead times were holding steady, and we could all compare outlook for profitability and employment prospects going forward. Our discussion in each monthly report showed how our shops compared to the Federal Reserve’s Industrial Production and Manufacturing Output Indicators.

Here is what we said in August: “According to the Federal Reserve, Industrial Production decreased 0.2% in August. Manufacturing output edged up 0.1% after increasing 0.6% in July.” Here is how the PMPA participating shops performed for that same period: “The PMPA Business Trends Sales Index increased from 154 in July to 173 in August, a gain of nineteen points (12.3%). This is our index’s third highest value ever…PMPA’s Business Trends August Sales increase substantially outperformed the sales of the broader industrial production sector’s performance.”

How do PMPA shops know if their organizational performance compares to that of their peers, their industry or sector? By effective associating. By sharing, in complete confidentiality, a few items of relevant data and sentiment. By aggregating data from trusted and known peers, PMPA is able to provide inferences that “promote the common economic interests of all commercial enterprises in a trade.” Where do you go to get trusted information? We invite you to join PMPA and become part of a trusted community of peers and get your own company’s personalized Business Trends snapshot reported to you monthly. Know where you stand compared to the broad economy, the industrial and manufacturing sector; and your peers. Get a forecast of sentiment looking ahead three months. And when you join, we will share with you how our early in the year data reliably forecasts the end of the year sales average. How much more comfortable would your decision-making be based on trusted data?

 

Author

Miles Free III is the PMPA Director of Industry Affairs with over 50 years of experience in the areas of manufacturing, quality and steelmaking. Miles’ podcast is at pmpa.org/podcast. Email Miles

This week’s topics: CPI, Global Comparison on Manufacturing Operation Costs, Federal Government Spring 2022 OSHA Agenda, Top OSHA Violations of FY2021.

PMPA shares important information you may have missed while you were making essential parts.    More info and links…

Each material has a specification that covers requirements that apply to characteristics important to our machining and processing as well as end use of parts.  Learn what to expect –  what to do and not do – to avoid and minimize material issues that can negatively affect your processing. 

Recorded: May 2, 2022 at National Technical Conference in Milwaukee, WI.

Speakers:

Joe Gentile, Hangsterfer’s Laboratories
Matt Schubert, Round Ground Metals
John Pechan, Round Ground Metals
Ray Schnell, Valbruna Stainless
Jack Horner, Wieland Chase

Who would benefit: Setup, Machinists, Estimators, Engineers, Foremen, Leadmen, Operators, Quality

Experience track: Mastery

Download Hangsterfer’s Laboratories, Inc. Presentation

Download Round Ground Metals Presentation

Download Wieland Chase Presentation

Download Valbruna Stainless Inc. Presentation

ACCESS
Access grants unlimited online streaming.  Copyright PMPA 2022.  May not be distributed or copied.  May be used for training of member employee personnel.

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$100 for PMPA Members who did not attend.

ACCESS TO MATERIALS PANEL: TECHNICAL ISSUES

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Comments from attendees:

  • Good discussions with all of the speakers
  • Great job by everyone who spoke. Informative and relevant.
  • Good info
  • A lot of really good knowledge.
  • Very insightful session. strong material insights and also great to include Hangsterfers.
  • I enjoyed the presentations
  • Enjoyed the conversation on all metals.
  • Very interesting – thank you

 

Recorded: May 3, 2022 at National Technical Conference in Milwaukee, WI.

Speakers:

Kevin Johnson, Fischer Special Tool
Brandon Buckhout (filling in for Osny Fabricio, Balzers)

Who would benefit: Setup, Machinists, Estimators, Engineers, Foremen, Leadmen, Operators

Experience track: Mastery

Download FISCHER Special Tooling Presentation

Download Oerlikon Balzers Presentation

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ACCESS TO TOOL COATING

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Comments from attendees:

  • Great explanation of various coating how they appear
  • Very good and valuable information
  • Good info.
  • Pretty interesting presentation