Do You Have Single Points of Failure?

Plans need to be in place before a catastrophic event occurs.

by David Wynn

Director of Technical Services, PMPA

Published October 1, 2024

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The CrowdStrike event showed how having a single point of failure (in this case, a coding mistake) can have cascading effects. Services of companies worldwide were halted until issues could be resolved. We are in no-fail industries, so it begs the question … Do you have single points of failure in your shop?

Failure
Failure can come in many forms. Production can stop in a shop due to running out of coolant, lost tools or late arrival of raw materials. All these are failures that affect one job or one machine that can be remedied. We can always try alternate tooling. Jobs can be moved to another machine. Parts could even be made from larger diameter material for expedited production. They are not catastrophic single points of failure because contingencies are already in place. At the very least, solutions can be found quickly.
However, an event that takes days, weeks or longer to recover from is considered catastrophic. Solutions may not be readily apparent, so when catastrophic events occur, plans need to already be in place; plans that were communicated to all parties involved to get mission-critical processes moving.

Power Outages
Power outages can stop production. Do you have alternate sources of power in case of emergency? Companies use battery backup on electronics all the time. Have you ever thought about using them on a machine? A small power outage for just a few minutes can interrupt production across a shop. The air compressor needs to be restarted. All the machines and bar loaders must be reset. If machines were in the cut, they must be carefully backed out and restarted. There might even be scrap associated with the outage, because a machine was in the middle of an operation that can’t easily be restarted — I am thinking of threading. Who is responsible for restarting the shop during a power outage? Is there a procedure? What happens if this outage continues for days or weeks? I know of a member shop whose area was devastated by a tornado. They were first told that the power would be out for a month. Fortunately, this shop already had a plan in place to rent a large generator from a local electrician. Luckily, power was restored within a week, but what would have happened if they did not have a plan?

Equipment
Our equipment can fall into this category as well. Think about having only one of a top-of-the-line Swiss machine running critical parts. What happens when that machine is down? Parts cannot be shipped to the customer because of this single point of failure. Having at least two of every machine is the best solution; however that is not always economically feasible. At least have an alternate process to produce parts until the machine can be repaired. It is better to make production doing three operations than to fail our customers. It is important to have contingencies on all aspects of producing parts down to having alternate outside vendors. What if a plater has a massive fire? Are there other vendors pre-production approval processed and ready to fill the void?

Physical Plant
A shop could be a single point of failure in and of itself. Are there backup plans to serve customers if a catastrophic event destroys the building and equipment? For instance, a tornado, hurricane or earthquake could prevent a shop from operating for months. How will the customers be served during this time? Do you have backup suppliers that can fill the void until production is up and running?
Planning for disaster is important. Hopefully, we never have to use the plans. If there are no plans for disaster, high-pressure scenarios can result in fatal failure. Build plans around the worst-case scenarios. Know what to do when an event happens. Building out disaster plans gets to the root of what our FMEA process should look like. Go out and build real FMEAs that have actionable solutions.

Author

David Wynn is the PMPA Director of Technical Services with over 20 years of experience in the areas of manufacturing, quality, ownership, IT and economics. Email David

Domain Mastery for Mastering Change

What are the positions on your team’s roster to ensure that you win the game of ‘change?’

by Miles Free III

Director of Industry Affairs, PMPA

Published October 1, 2024

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I just wanted to do my job, but they closed the plant and used dynamite on the blast furnace at which I worked. I just wanted to report the daily iron production, but then they made us do it using a computer. The list of changes over my career is endless.

After 50 years in the steel and manufacturing business, I continue to be amazed at the rate of change. Change continues to accelerate throughout the economy, our markets and our technology. And sadly, every steel plant that I ever worked at physically has been shuttered. The steel industry did not do change very well. Here are some thoughts so that our precision machining shops do not repeat the experiences of my former employers.

Regulatory Change
When I first started at U.S. Steel, in an iron ore screening station in Youngstown, Ohio, the PPE available included a respirator authorized for use by MSA (Mine Safety Administration.) That was because there was no OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) at the time. OSHA was signed into law in December of 1970, and was enacted in April of 1971. In 1970, there was no OSHA requirement or standard for PPE. Today, OSHA enforces nearly 1,000 standards. In 2023, OSHA charged American businesses over $132 million for violations of just the top 10 most-cited regulations.
Who is the master of the domain of Occupational Safety and Health compliance in your shop? What is their budget to continuously improve their understanding, knowledge and ability to minimize the risk of an OSHA violation in your operation? Where can they go to get industry focused resources to level up your shop’s compliance?

Technology Change
When I first started calling on shops in the precision machining industry, the technology universally employed was cam automatic bar machines. I needed to be knowledgeable about how the additives or treatments in the steel my company made contributed to the successful machining of parts. I also needed to understand my customer’s operations if I was going to be an effective advocate for our steel and a problem solver in their shop. The first “emergency claim” that put me on a same day flight to the customer. Our premium free machining steel was wearing a groove into the side of the form tool being used by our automotive customer. Fortunately, I knew that the side of the form tool shouldn’t be doing the cutting, and I was able to help my customer. My knowledge of the steel domain would have been insufficient, but knowing how the customer’s equipment functioned — or more correctly, was supposed to function — enabled me to lead their problem solving.
Who on your team is the domain master for how your customer uses the components that you produce? Who on your team is the domain master for the sourcing of materials and the implications for your operation if that sourcing changes ? Where can they go to stay current besides making another customer or supplier visit?

Technology Change, Part II
Today, while cam automatic machines continue to be one method of producing high-precision, high-volume parts, there are a host of different technologies using computer numerical controls (CNC) rather than cams. Machines that can handle multispindle, high-volume production. Machines that might do turning, milling and rotary transfer, as well as offer a host of different ways to present tools to generate features including sub-spindles, synchronized sub-spindles, B-axis and Swiss technology — some of which now add laser capabilities on machine.
Who is your domain master for each and every one of these machining domains, and yes, where do they go to get the latest information to stay current and understand where those capabilities are headed? Attending the Precision Machining Technology Show every other year is one way, but what else is available?

Market Change
When I started serving companies in the precision machining space, the single largest market was for turned parts for automotive. Mostly hose fittings, but also parts for fuel and brake systems as well. These parts were produced primarily on multispindle cam automatic bar machines, typically using free machining materials. There is still a role for these machines and these parts, but today, more shops that I visit are using CNC turning and CNC Swiss machines to produce sophisticated parts for medical, dental, firearms and electronics applications. And the growth in automotive is in new components from non-free machining materials for electric vehicles. Leaded steels, once the mainstay of our production processes, are no longer melted here in North America.
Our current domain knowledge is not enough. Just “doing the job” is no longer sufficient. All the domains are changing. Our jobs are changing as well. This means that the skills and abilities of our performers need to change.
Do you have a process for helping your people stay current and get ahead with changes in the technology that they use and the markets they serve? Do you have a process or pathway to grow the expertise you need in critical but non-production domains such as safety, regulatory, HR and IT/cyber systems and security? Quality requirements are becoming more challenging as well. A failure in any one of these areas could result in penalties and reputational damage that could cause the loss of your business.
PMPA is proud to provide programming and speakers at our various meetings and through webinars, podcasts and other deliverables to help shops identify challenges and find resources to help meet those challenges. Is your firm taking full advantage? Do you have a cadre of up and comers that are actively “changing their game” to keep your shop up to date with all of the changes? Or are you going to wait until the crisis arrives and then improvise? Or try to find and hire expensive outside expertise? Anticipation is the greatest value of management. How is your shop anticipating? Managing? What is your plan for developing the people to lead you through the inevitable change that is on its way?

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

‘Can You Hold This Tolerance?’ Is Not An Engineering Question

The implications of tolerances go far beyond mere technical compliance.

by Miles Free III

Director of Industry Affairs, PMPA

Published September 1, 2024

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One of the most frequent questions in contract manufacturing is “Can you hold this tolerance?” Tolerances are a key deliverable on our precision machined products, so it makes sense that this would be a frequent question. But sadly, this question is often considered solely as a technical problem. In fact, the technical aspects are the least important factors that this question implies.

What Is The Purpose Of Our Business?
In two words, the purpose of our business is to “serve customers.” Customers provide demand, which provides the organization with its reason for being, in our case, contracting to produce precision components that the customer needs. Without customers there are no sales, no services and no profits. Loss of customers — or customer demand — is an existential threat of the gravest kind to an organization. Tolerances are an important aspect of the customer’s demand as the components that the customer wants to purchase “need” to meet those tolerances requested so that the components and the systems that they are a key part of function. This can be seen as even more than “important” when considering that often these components are part of human safety critical systems — where failure to function can mean life, death, serious injury or serious destruction of property.

The purpose of our business is to satisfy the customer’s demand by producing parts that meet their engineered requirements. Meeting tolerances is not negotiable: If they did not need them, they would not ask for them. Tolerances must be held. That is the basis of customer demand, which is the basis of our business.

What Is Our Philosophy Of Customer Service?
What is our vision of what we do? What is our aspiration for our business? For our place in the market? It is easy to get confused and lose track of what we are really trying to do in our business. The first distraction is profits. Profits are not the object of our business, they are in fact the reward for leading our business to serve our customers. If profits are the “goal,” then we will be seduced by many false idols that lure us into diverting our attention from serving the customer to taking a detour to maximize profits. Cheaper materials, cheaper tools, a shortcut here, an ignored safeguard or check to “save time” — because we all know “time is money” — all of these false idols subordinate the customer to the demands of our accounting scoreboard.

In his book “The Practice of Management,” Peter Drucker argues, “The role of profits in a business is to cover the risks inevitably involved in its operation … the profit required to enable it to stay in business and to maintain intact the wealth producing capacity of its resources.” Profits are the necessary compensation that enable us to serve, and continue to serve our customers — those who bring us their demand, their needs to be filled. In his book “Management: Tasks, Responsibilities and Practices,” Drucker states, “Profit is not a cause, but a result — the result of the performance of the business in marketing, innovation, and productivity. It is a needed result, serving essential economic functions.”

For us to focus on profits, rather than meeting customers’ needs, is truly to put the cart before the horse. If we fulfill the customers’ needs, the result will be profits. How much profit do we make when we no-quote the job because
“we can’t hold the tolerance?” Rhetorical question, really.

One Approach to Handling Difficult Tolerances
The question of restricted tolerances comes up frequently in manufacturing and is often avoided because of the difficulty of analysis of capability (if one has data). And sometimes because no capability statistics exist. So the question is avoided, no-quoted or put in that ever-growing stack of “if only the customer would …” that is seldom analyzed for insights into what our customers truly need.

This question has crossed my desk many times over my manufacturing career, as the quality assurance professional assigned to gather the needed facts and as the plant manager or division director with ultimate responsibility for operations, quality and profitability. My most frequent and preferred response was, “It is our intention to lead in the markets we serve. If we do not currently have the capability, it is our job to develop it to meet the market needs.”

The market — our customers, collectively — is continuously improving its products. We need to continuously improve our processes if we are to hold and gain market share. Failure to keep up with market (customer) demands is a great way to turn a small fortune into an even smaller one. Our imperative as leaders is to continue to improve our processes and personnel in order to preserve our competitive and preferred position with our customers and markets.

The Real Question
There are several possible objections to this way of thinking, of course. Not every quote will be economically viable over the medium or long term. It would be foolish for a business to invest in new capabilities when the demand is fleeting or insufficient to cover the needed return on investment. This is why “Can you hold this tolerance?” is not an engineering question.

It is, in today’s world, an economic and business decision. Technologies exist and are readily available to help our shops create any combination of dimensional and geometric requirements imaginable — and if not by subtracting material, then by building it up using additive processes.
The question  of “Can we hold this tolerance?” is really a leadership question. A question with its basis in economics, markets, and organizational trust and creditworthiness. Of course we can hold the tolerance. We just need to (fill in the blank). Will the demand justify our investment? The real question, in fact: “Is this an opportunity that will help our company lead in the markets we serve? Is there a chance to improve our capabilities and in so doing increase the reward that our customers give us for meeting
their needs?” Can we hold this tolerance is not an engineering question. It is a question that tests our commitment to leadership. “Is it our intention to lead in the markets we serve? Is it our intention to be the preferred supplier of precision machined services to our customers?” These are the real questions that are implied by “Can we hold this tolerance?” Of course, we can if the economics are right. Now, who has that process capability 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