CNC Industries is certified to AS9100 Rev. C

CNC Industries is pleased to announce that it has passed it’s audit to AS9100 Rev. C.   This means that CNC Industries is fully compliant with the most recent revision to the AS9100 Quality Management Standard (QMS).

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As quoted from International Standards Authority…

“Independent Certification to AS9100 validates your company’s commitment to Quality and provides the organization with:

•  Performance based analysis aimed towards defect prevention methods and continual improvement.

•  Fulfilling certification requirements as approved suppliers for OEMs.

•  Improve customer satisfaction and reduction in audits and oversight by the OEMs.

•  Enhanced performance and cost savings from operational consistency and reduction in rework and scrap.

•  Distinct advantage over competition.

•  Prestigious international recognition.”

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CNC Industries is AS9100 Certified.

We will be issuing a press release about this early next week, but we are now fully certified to AS9100 B.  The official certificate and press kit came in the mail today, and we were placed in the OASIS online database of certified suppliers earlier in the week.  Overall the auditing to certification process was relatively painless, for a four day audit at least.

We have researched the AS9100 certification statistics a little bit:

In Fort Wayne there are only 8 AS9100 certified companies, including CNC Industries.  CNC Industries is the only precision machine shop in Fort Wayne to receive an AS9100 certification.  Likewise we are the only custom machine shop certified in Fort Wayne as well.

In Indiana there are now 112 companies certified to AS9100.  The vast majority are service or assembly houses.  We have not looked at all of the certifications, but our estimation is that we are one of only 10 or so machine shops to be certified to AS9100.

In the United States there are 5725 total companies certified.  assuming the same approximate ratio of machine shops, I would assume that we are one of 575 machine shops in the country with the AS9100 certification.  This puts us in a very elite class of machine shops, one that we are proud to be a member of.

The full press release will be issued early next week.

August 6th, 2010|

AS 9100 Audit is complete

July 16th was the final day of our Stage 2 AS9100 audit!  It has been a lengthy, stressful time to move from ISO 9001 to AS 9100.  We have done extremely well in our audit process, and only have a pair of very minor findings to be 100%.  Both corrective actions are completed and we are waiting on getting a little bit of paperwork done, and then final review from the audit board at SGS and we will be officially certified as an AS9100 company.

At CNC Industries we look at this as another way to add confidence to our customers – who are extremely quality conscious.  As I have talked about on this blog aerospace machining is a difficult industry to be in.  The price, quality, and delivery requirements put on aerospace suppliers are all extreme and the management of the business must be able to handle the many pressures and unforeseen issues that will arise.

Here at CNC Industries, we feel that we have all of the tools necessary to provide the best of the ‘three-legged stool’ to our customers – best price, on-time delivery, and quality.  We look forward to issuing a formal press release as soon as the paperwork is complete on the audit.

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CNC Industries is a Fort Wayne, Indiana based machine shop specializing in precision CNC machining, fabrication and assembly of application-critical and custom machined parts for the Aerospace, Defense, Medical, Industrial and Transportation  markets.   The company presently employs approximately 55 people.

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June 23rd, 2010|Tags: |

Precision Aerospace Machining and the seven wastes of lean manufacturing (part 5)

The fifth of the seven wastes is the most readily obvious waste – defects.  A part or product that is not made correctly and needs to be either re-worked or discarded, is obviously a waste.  The time spent on the original part is wasted, the material and other costs are wasted, the time that it takes to re-work or re-make the part is wasted.  Overall defects cause considerable disruptions and waste.

Once again high volume work has an easier time of removing defects from the process.  the length of the run of a part will justify creating more complex and expensive fixturing to enable quality at the course – so that the part has little or no chance of being produced improperly.  Custom inspection procedures will allow quick discovery of any non-conforming parts as well.

In a low volume high mix facility – as a large portion of CNC Industries is, making custom machined parts and precision aerospace machined parts, we cannot spend an extensive amount of time on fixturing – our lead time for the entire first batch of product is sometimes shorter than production companies will spend on a single fixture for a production part.  The inspection requirements and quality standards will also vary – sometimes greatly – between parts running through our shop at the same time.  We have to ensure that each fixture is made quickly and still performs as it needs to.

Of course defects are caused by a myriad of issues beyond just the fixturing the part correctly.  We have many more methods of preventing mistakes and defects before they occur, but I think a more telling evaluation of a companies dedication to eliminating defects is the processes taken when a defect does occur.  At CNC Industries, we place great emphasis on root cause analysis and corrective / preventative actions.  As we are nearing our AS9100 certification, we are more aware of this need than ever before.

Our Corrective Action System is based on the Apollo Root Cause Analysis and allows and indefinite depth of root cause analysis.  We regard and defect as a serious issue and are quick to come to an understanding of the root cause that allowed the defect to occur.  With our ERP system, we are able to quickly resolve any ongoing systemic issue and immediately take the necessary corrective action to prevent future occurrences of the issue.  Preventative and corrective actions and their resolutions are transmitted throughout the company immediately upon completion and necessary procedural and process changes are automatically updated.  All relevant documentation is kept entirely in sync with our digital paperless document system.

The ability to adjust our entire process to address a deficiency in the processes that we utilize allows us to have an extremely low defect rate – and when the very occasional defect does occur we can quickly adapt and prevent the problem in the future.

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CNC Industries is a Fort Wayne, Indiana based machine shop specializing in precision CNC machining, fabrication and assembly of application-critical and custom machined parts for the Aerospace, Defense, Medical, Industrial and Transportation  markets.   The company presently employs approximately 55 people.

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Needed: Precision Machine Shop for Custom Machined Parts

Many companies that need custom machined parts are not sure of the process of getting started with a machine shop supplier.  In this post I will go over the basic process.  As I talked about in a prior post about evaluating a precision machine shop, it is important be careful in selecting a supplier of custom made parts.  In society today it is normal to simply  go with the lowest price on pretty much any purchase.  With the modernization of production, it is normally safe to assume that any product purchased will pretty much be the exact same no matter where it is purchased.  With custom machine parts, it is important to ensure that the supplier is qualified and capable of making the part.

Large companies will spend a large amount of time vetting a new supplier that makes custom machined parts.  Two recent companies that have started with CNC Industries, spent an average of 6 months in the process of examining our company before sending their first production purchase orders to us.  In the process of examining our company the new customers looked at our production capabilities, our information management systems, our  inspection processes, and the custom machined parts that we have made in the past.

Now a small company will probably not have a team that is used to handling this process.  Many small companies may never have had to order custom parts before.  For those companies 6 months research of a new machine shop supplier is probably not an option that they can consider.  In that case, an examination of the website of the potential supplier is worthwhile of course, but anyone can have a nice web presence.  It is still possible to feel out a new machine shop without the lengthy process that large companies go through.

One way to start is to simply send out a Request For Quote  (RFQ) to the machine shop in question.  I would certainly recommend not simply going off of the price of the quote as the only determinate of which company to go with.  After receiving the quotes, you will probably see a wide variety of prices come in.  After getting these quotes call up a couple of machine shops from different price levels and ask to talk about how they are going to manufacture your part.  You will be able to  get a feel of the company by how they describe the process.  Some questions to ask them:

  • How did the come up with the price that they did?
  • What engineering steps take place before manufacturing?
  • What process control methods do they employ to ensure quality throughout manufacturing?
  • How is their inspection done?
  • Are they certified ISO or any other appropriate certification?

and one other that has been useful to many of our customers:

  • Are there any changes to the part that the machine shop would recommend in order to lower production cost?

We have been able to save many of our customers considerable amount on their prices by making minor non-functional changes to the part to enable easier machining.  Engineers that are focusing on assembly and pure functionality of the parts that they are designing may add features into a part that slow production time considerably but are not necessary to the functioning of the component (undercuts, overly tight tolerances, odd size material requirements, unusual material types etc)

Of course ask any other questions that you see appropriate.  It is important that you feel comfortable working with the machine shop that you decide upon. Our philosophy is that the most important measure of a machine shop is that of customer satisfaction.  We believe in what we call the 3 legged stool: Price, Quality and Customer Service.  Each of these attributes contributes to the overall value of the precision machine shop.

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CNC Industries is a Fort Wayne, Indiana based machine shop specializing in precision CNC machining, fabrication and assembly of application-critical and custom machined parts for the Aerospace, Defense, Medical, Industrial and Transportation  markets.   The company presently employs approximately 55 people.

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Preparing for AS 9100

We are full bore getting ready for our AS9100 audit which is coming up in a few months.  We have been operating well above the ISO9001-2000 standard for years now and feel that AS9100 will improve our company as well as improve our ability to attract new aerospace customers.    As a precision machine shop, we are very focused on continual improvement — it is an essential focus as the industry becomes ever more competitive.

In a nutshell AS9100 certification ensures that we follow a high level of standardization in documentation and in our processes.    Since we make a large number of custom machined parts it is imperative that our documentation is under tight control.    We focus a lot of our effort on our internal ERP system and other technology.   Job Manager allows us to very easily meet AS9100 standards while still performing very efficiently.

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CNC Industries is a Fort Wayne, Indiana based Job-Shop specializing in precision CNC machining, fabrication and assembly of application-critical and custom machined parts for the Aerospace, Defense, Medical, Industrial and Transportation  markets.   The company presently employs approximately 55 people.

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February 26th, 2010|Tags: , , |
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