Training assures our shops will be sustainable and that all are operating at their highest and best use. Scheduling does that for all the resources in our shops in light of market demand.
Last August we ran a post asking what was a company’s most important job?
Ford says Quality is Job 1…
It caused quite a stir on the many LinkedIn Forums and attracted a number of thoughtful comments.
The economy and markets for our precision machined products have changed since then, thanks to all the shenanigans in Washington D.C. involving the election and the fiscal cliff. Not to mention whatever is going on with the currencies and economies affecting imports and exports all around the world.
Based on comments from recent visits with members I think it is time to reconsider that question in light of circumstances today.
What is the most important job in our shops- today?
Today we do not seem to have the flexibility to grow our way out of our limits by adding new technology ( takes new employees ) or adding people ( we can’t find skilled people and with housing still underwater, even we did find them they won’t move). So we have to maximize (not just optimize) what we can produce with what we have. Adding more of either just doesn’t seem to be in the cards.
To me that means two things-
We need to upgrade cross training for our people,
We need our schedulers to do the impossible.
Cross training increases our teams’ ability to be agile, flexibile, and competent.
To meet challenges after a key team member is lost due to illness, retirement or accident. Cross training upgrades the value of each employee. It makes our shop more sustainable, by increasing the odds that our equipment will be operating. So the trainers and mentors play a key role in keeping our production and talent aligned. How is that going in your shop?
Scheduling is how we assure the greatest return for the resources deployed in our shop.
Scheduling is where all the assets and tools that we have can be applied to meet the market’s needs for our services and products. Assuring that all of our equipment and people are operating at their highest and best use is what the savvy scheduler is doing- to maximize the dollar throughput collected for each hour of shoptime from our customers.
You can rely on software for scheduling– if you are, I sure hope that someone has done some reality checking recently on the factors that your program uses for availability, prtoductivity and cost.
You can rely on the inside sales department to schedule your shop. If so I hope that “my inside sales rep” is the loudest and most obnoxious to assure that “my job” gets to the fron t of the line. I hope that is not the system at your company.
Or you can rely on a professional who works as part of a team-to understand the demands of the market, the limits of the equipment, and the abilities of the folks on the floor to assure that every thing is running at its “highest and best use” to assure the flow of product out the door and cash reciepts from the customers is a steady and growing stream.
Once the right folks have been hired, I’m thinking the most important job is having a schedule that assures that they and the equipment resources at their disposal are operating at their highest and best use.
We contribute a half dozen pages of content each month, and our partners at Gardner do the rest.
The February issue had a wonderful tutorial about how not to get the contract. It was written by John R. Wirtz, a respected marketer in the industry.
Spoiler alert– We’re just giving you the bullet points, you’ll need to go to Production Machining’s posting of 10 Ways to Get the Contract to get the full details!
So why did you lose a major project to a competitor?
Hint- it probably wasn’t your price!
1. Do less talking and more listening.
2. Use the tech review as a weapon of mass instruction.
I’d suggest acting on them immediately to improve your closing percentage.
Thanks to John R. Wirtz president of Pinpointe Marketing LLC. and Gardner Publications for the share.
Pinpointe Marketing, LLC, an Ohio-based sales and marketing firm specializing in the turned parts and engineered industrial products industries. He can be reached at 440-506-8963.
When I started in manufacturing, “The Gals” were in the office- not the shop.
122 women who make a difference in Manufacturing today
The inaugural group of 122 STEP honorees recognized by the Manufacturing Institute on February 5th in Washington D.C. showed me that the times have changed and that there are many, many ways that women can and do meaningfully contribute to manufacturing at their companies as
Plant and Production Managers,
Operations,
Engineers,
Technologists,
Process Control,
Regulatory Affairs,
Certified Welders,
CNC Machine Operators,
Weld Process Specialists,
Quality Control,
Health,
Environment,
Process Safety,
Chief Financial Officer,
Designers and Design Engineers,
Compliance Officers,
Chief Scientists,
Safety,
Quality,
Black Belts,
Training and Apprenticeship Instructors,
Manufacturing Lead,
Product Development,
Sales and Marketing,
Information Technology,
Lead Analyst,
Business Development,
Continuous Improvement,
Planning and Shipping,
Designer,s and Design Engineers
Information Security,
Assembly,
Legal and Corporate Affairs,
Systems Development,
President,
CEO
Owners
I am certain that I missed a few…
PMPA is proud to recognize our member and Vice President Darlene Miller, CEO of Permac Industries in Burnsville MN as one of this inaugural group of honorees.
“Darlene’s leadership reaches far beyond PERMAC. As a member of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness she recognized the need for trained high skill workers and led the creation of Right Skills Now training program and helped support the 10,000 Engineers nationwide engineering student retention program. She was named small business person of the year in 2008 by the U.S. Chamber, and serves as an officer and board member at PMPA as well as a number of other nonprofits.”
Congratulations to Darlene and all the women recognized for their vital role in manufacturing today. And thanks to the Manufacturing Institute for helping raise the awareness of the vital need for the talents that these and all women bring to our shops.
Yes, I would like to see my daughter get into manufacturing. Wouldn’t you?
The January 2013 PMI composite shows a modest expansion, with all of its component indices showing positive gains for January.
“The PMI™ registered 53.1 percent, an increase of 2.9 percentage points from December’s seasonally adjusted reading of 50.2 percent, indicating expansion in manufacturing for the second consecutive month. The New Orders Index registered 53.3 percent, an increase of 3.6 percent over December’s seasonally adjusted reading of 49.7 percent, indicating growth in new orders. Manufacturing is starting out the year on a positive note, with all five of the PMI™’s component indexes — new orders, production, employment, supplier deliveries and inventories — registering above 50 percent in January.” January ISM Report
Precision machining is a subsector of Fabricated Metals, which was one of 13 sectors reporting growth in January in the following order: Plastics & Rubber Products; Textile Mills; Furniture & Related Products; Printing & Related Support Activities; Apparel, Leather & Allied Products; Electrical Equipment, Appliances & Components; Miscellaneous Manufacturing; Fabricated Metal Products; Transportation Equipment; Petroleum & Coal Products; Machinery; Primary Metals; and Food, Beverage & Tobacco Products.
What does ISM’s PMI have to do with you?
The ISM correlates generally with GDP and Industrial Production over time. for a great discussion of how the ISM fits into the big picture, you might like “Robert Oak’s” take over at “The Economic Populist” blog.
“Robert Oak” is the pen name of “a thinking person like yourself who became fed up with corporate written and special interest driven trade, labor and economic policy and analysis. Many spin with numbers including the financial press. Robert Oak analyzes by first principles and puts accuracy and objectivity first. The numbers don’t lie but people lie with numbers all the time.”
Complete changeover and setup in under an hour is old news at Vanamatic.
Here are 8 positive impacts of a setup reduction for your precision machining shop from PMPA member company Vanamatic, who created the Vanamatic Lean Setup Reduction Video to show you the way…
1. Manufacturing Capacity. Setup reduction increases manufacturing capacity without adding people or machines. Doing more with less is the essential lesson of lean.
2. Scheduling. Standard (8-hour) setups are notorious for ending up at 20 hours, which puts the machine in the hole before it starts. Setup reduction programs compress the bad setup times significantly, which also helps scheduling. Setup reduction increases on-time performance and builds customer loyalty.
3. Premium Time/Overtime. Setups gone wrong often require overtime hours to catch up. Additional premium time is seldom required with a good setup reduction program.
4. Setup Skills. Good setups from scratch require the highest skilled setup personnel; interchangeable tooling setups can be performed by operators.
5. Scrap and Defects. Setup scrap can be limited to a few pieces and bar ends. Ideal setup reduction programs generate a good piece on the first piece.
6. Machine Maintenance. Machine problems after setups from scratch occur frequently. Setup reduction programs with interchangeable tooling reduce the number of machine component adjustments, thus eliminating breakage caused by improper adjustment.
7. Tool Breakage. How often have you heard, “The tool broke because it was set wrong”? Quick-change/interchangeable setups eliminate breakage. They use tools that drop in or are preset outside the machine, resulting in setups and normal tool changes that seldom result in breakage because of improper settings.
8. Down and Waiting for Machine/Tool Components. Good setup reduction systems require that all tool and machine components be ready prior to the setup beginning. The best setup reduction programs store all tools and components in the machine area (not a crib) so the operator/setup people can prep for the next setup while the machine is running.
PMPA offers the Vanamtic Setup Reduction Case Study slides and Video (via CD-R with paper master handouts) for a $500 donation to the PMPA Educational Foundation. The PMPA Educational Foundation awards grants to applying companies and individuals to further their skills training in the precision machining area.
These materials provide convincing evidence that Lean Setups are not just wishful thinking by showing actual people actually performing.
Contact Jeff Remaley for an order form and we will also include a copy of the Micron Manufacturing Case study as well…
Guest Post by Dave Bradford, President, William Bradford Associates, Cleveland Ohio.
Dave publishes a series of PROTALK roundtable discussions to improve professional sales skills of industrial distributors, including steel service centers.
“Friedman suggested that the phrase ‘the invisible hand’ refers to ‘the possibility of cooperation without coercion,'” according to Dave.
Here is Dave Bradford’s take on why ‘the invisible hand’ hasn’t provided us the skilled workers we need.
1) The timing is not right. Without an economic imperative to improve skills and having it seen as a necessity to fulfill the mission of the company, training will not be a priority. Once training becomes an imperative to the mission in management’s eyes, steps needed will be taken to supply skilledworkers.
Speaking of Precision (SOP): It is up to us, not ‘invisible hands’ and we’ll do it as we see the need.)
2) We lack a priority on skilled training. Making skilled worker training a priority is similar to heat treating in steel, according to Dave. Just as heat treating rearranges the atoms in a structure to achieve a desired result, so too should our managements have a process for rearranging the priorities in our companies. Management can achieve a more profitable outcome by investing in this training and including it in long term planning by applying ‘heat’ to the company’s priorities.
SOP: Why did a former boss talk about “holding people’s feet to the fire“… the invisible hand’s job being to hold those feet right there.
3) We require a sharper focus on critical skills within workers, an asset as yet untapped by management. Stephen Covey’s inside-out approach recognizes that potential for skills exists within capable people, but doesn’t contribute to the bottom line until management unleashes it. ‘Sharpening the saw’ is Covey’s phrase for ongoing renewal. This idea applies to our workers, by providing them with refresher and advanced skill training to perform at their optimum level. Peter Drucker says essentially the same thing: Optimize positive forces in a company to make negative factors irrelevant.
SOP: ‘The invisible hand’ is management’s awareness of its resources to develop and improve critical skills in workers. This awareness either exists or it doesn’t. Dave Bradford sees the phrase as ambiguous, which serves to kindle economic, political and academic discussions. He implies that the invisible hand may simply be an alias for “us.”
Why don’t we make skills training a priority, rearrange our carbon atoms, and ‘sharpen our saw’ by focusing on untapped human resources?Maybe the invisible hand is, in fact, the hand that we aren’t seeing at the end of our own arm.Are we doing enough to benefit society by pursuing our own interest?
Have we done enough to pursue our own interest, so that society too can benefit?
“The unique situations created by the Great Recession have rendered some traditional economic indicators unreliable. And I believe that the indicator that has been impacted the most is the Unemployment Rate (U-3) reported by the U.S. Government.”
Don Ake is an MBA and adjunct professor and blogger over at Model T Stock Trends. Don follows the Transportation sector as a leading indicator for the economy and investing.
I find his down home charm and easy to understand explanations of economic arcana to be both informative and amusing. Here’s the rest of his post:
” This post was initially supposed to be an in depth analysis of the current (U-3) Unemployment Rate. Soon after starting my research, I found myself looking at a large pile of goo (if you are unemployed you may substitute “poo” for “goo” or probably a much stronger term). There have been several articles recently about why the Unemployment Rate is not an accurate measurement of this labor market. People are constantly trying to adjust the rate based on a single factor. However there are many factors impacting the job market and these factors are very difficult to measure.
U-3 unemployment rate is a gooey indicator according to Don Ake.
“Sure, you can still calculate the Unemployment Rate percentage, but it is now just a statistic. It is not an accurate indicator of the job market. It is useless to put it on a historical chart. The recessions of the past occurred primarily in a “blue-collar” labor force. The recession hit, workers were laid-off. The recovery begins and people returned to work, often at their previous jobs. But the Great Recession hit all workers and created some dynamics that are very different.
“The Unemployment Rate is greatly impacted by the number of people actively looking for work (the labor participation rate). Many people have stopped looking for work, but for many different reasons. For example, Fred the Engineer, age 59, was downsized from his job after 30 years with his company. In previous recessions layoffs were based on seniority, but in the Great Recession they were based on salary. Fred looked for a job, but nobody needs an aging engineer in a slow economy, so after exhausting his severance and unemployment benefits, he decides to retire at age 62. He is not counted as “unemployed”, but he is a“forced” retiree and would gladly be working if a job were available.
“The labor participation rate is being impacted by these “forced retirees”, people going on “disability” due to the more lenient government standards, the discouraged workers who have temporarily stopped looking due to the tepid job market. There are also“mismatched workers” whose jobs were eliminated by new technology and who lack the skills to function in the new economy. If these people are younger, they may drop out of the labor force to be reeducated, if they are older, they often become the long-term unemployed. And of course you have the “benefit riders”that ride their benefits out to the end, before seriously looking for work.
“The great majority of unemployed people are actively searching for work and hate being without a job. However, in 2011 a construction worker told me he wasn’t really seeking work because he was on the “Obama Plan” and was enjoying his extended unemployment benefits. Miraculously, he found a new job just weeks after his benefits ran out. So yes, it is true as many others have pointed out: If you pay people to be unemployed, you get more unemployed people.
“Another factor that is difficult to measure is the thousands of college graduates of the last five years who cannot find jobs in their field of study. They either have no job or are woefully “under-employed” which may mean a job in fast food. The underemployed (which aren’t accurately measured) also include the “Fred the Engineers” who are not old or wealthy enough to retire and are working full time at the local telemarking firm. It is taking some professionals longer than four years to return to work in their field.
Since the Unemployment Rate is currently of marginal value, we are left with the monthly jobs reports (from the government and ADP). And this measures the number of jobs creted, not the quality of these jobs. Replacing a manufacturing job with a call center job is not an even swap.
“The latest government report said 155,000 jobs were created in December. This rate of job growth is woefully inadequate to provide for the millions of people seeking work (or better work). I am hearing about more layoffs and hiring freezes from my local contacts. And the current plan for creating more jobs is“there is no plan”.
“We need more precise information to better gauge and track the employment/unemployment situation. Employment surveys need to ask people the reason they are not seeking employment, if they would work if a job was available, and whether they are“underemployed” if they have a job. There is an opportunity here for a university or survey firm to create a new index. Hey, that would even create a few more jobs!”
The tolerance on cold drawn steel bars for machining is always specified as plus nothing minus some value…
So why are the dimensions on the bars held to the minus rather than plus side? Don’t we want to get more steel per foot for our money?
May I have your answer please?
And the answer is …
The reason for the dimensions being held to the minus side is so that the bars can easily pass through a hole of nominal size.
If the bars were the same nominal size as the hole, they would be very difficult to assemble. If the bars were even slighty larger, they would not pass through.
So bars are held to the minus side of each nominal dimension to assure that they can pass through the nominal size hole- whether it be a bushing, pulley, gear, collet, support bearing or any similar application.
The bars must measure less than the nominal hole size to permit assembly.
How did this come to be?
Before the era of electric motors, power was transmitted to each machine by means of belts and pulleys running on cold finished shafting.
Line shafting! The power transmission shafts that ran across the ceilings of shops while being held in bearings were called line shafting. The power was taken from the shafts by belts and pulleys. The shafts were held by bearings afixed to the ceiling joists. The shafting had to fit into these bearings and pulleys.(These shafts were driven usually by a single large motor, steam engine, or water wheel…)
It has been some time since power transimission shafting has been used commercially to drive our lathes and drills commercially.
But we have the legacy of cold finished shafting to thank for the foundational concept of tolerances on bar products being held to the minus side.
Thanks to John Halladay at PMPA technical Vectron in Elyria Ohio for the archival shop photo from the Perry Fay company.
And if you have a burr problem with some of your production, you can call on Vectron to help you with that too.
Do you have memories of working with machinery driven by line shafting in your career? We’d love to hear your story…
The PMPA Business Trends Report 2012 Year End Review and Summary is completed and posted on our website here.
Despite a great start for sales in the industry at the beginning of the year, the special causes of the uncertainty leading up to the election and the ‘Fiscal Cliff’ took the wind out of our sails sales, resulting in 2012 sales index barely equalling that of 2011.
Bummer dude. Too bad about that election and fiscal cliff stuff…
For a host of specifics, and our outlook for important precision machining markets in 2013, please see our report.
Literally.
