Continuous Improvement and Precision Machining

There is a lot of buzz about continuous improvement in the business world today.  As a precision machine shop that focuses on contract manufacturing, CNC Industries has a different perspective than am office or a production machining facility.  While we do have several production jobs, the bulk of our work comes in short term contracts.

With short term contracts we do not have the luxury of being able to improve upon our performance throughout a physical run of a job.   Our customers demand a high level of precision, so we also cannot ‘dial the tolerance in’ over time.   Instead we need to focus on getting a repeatable general process developed which allows us to quickly and efficiently switch between our various contracted jobs.

Our continuous improvement initiative needs to account for the fact that our machines may be running different custom parts tomorrow than they are making today.  With all of this in mind, we allow each person in our company to suggest improvements both to how we run an individual machined part, as well as suggestions for the overall process of machining, how we get ready to machine parts, ability to keep precision, and any other facet of how our company works.  Our Process Change Request system ensures that each employee has the ability to express their thoughts for improvement in a way that will be reviewed in a timely manner.

Through the use of technology – specifically our ERP system Job Manager, we are able to monitor how effective we are from day to day.  We are able to track overall shop performance as well as any individual  job performance.  We make sure that all of our machinery is kept up-to-date with maintenance and we regularly purchase new equipment as needed.  As we see areas that are lagging in performance we are able to quickly remedy any deficiencies.

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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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