Steven Deam, Author at CNC Industries

Who Does America Trust? Small Business!

By: Steven Deam, Sr. – CNC Industries, Inc. Fort Wayne, Indiana

According to a recent article in the NFIB (National Federation of Small Business) “My Business” magazine, a recent Pew Research Center poll shows that when asked who they trust, 71% of respondents said small business. That contrasts with 25% for big business, 22% for banks, and 25% for the Federal Government.

Given that small businesses account for over 70% of new job creation, it seems that rather than burden small business with even more paperwork and costs the government would be more interested in creating a business-friendly environment. Unfortunately, at CNC Industries we have seen no indication whatsoever that the government is trying to actually help small businesses grow and, in turn, expand employment. All indications are that the cost of doing business will continue to rise – which is precisely why businesses of all size are very reluctant to hire.

The politicians seem unable to understand that it requires a demand for our products and services along with the ability to generate a profit in order for business expansion and job creation to occur. Possibly if more of the politicians had a business background and had actually run a small business they might be able to understand these relatively simple principles. The threat of Cap & Trade, Card Check, and substantial tax increases – in addition to a host of new regulations and requirements recently put in place are putting a huge damper on business expansion.

At CNC Industries we are continuing to expand – despite the bloated government bureaucracy which works against us. It would just be so nice if, for a change, our government would work with small business. Unfortunately, I don’t see that in the cards!

August 30th, 2010|Tags: America, Small Business, Trust|

CNC Industries Certified to AS9100 Rev C

By Steven R Deam – CNC Industries, Inc. Fort Wayne, Indiana

CNC Industries Completes AS9100 Rev C Certification

Fort Wayne, IN 8/12/2010

For Immediate Release

Date: Thursday, August 12, 2010

Contact: Steven R Deam

CNC Industries

Fort Wayne, IN

260.490.5700

Email: stevendeam@cncind.com

Fort Wayne, IN-CNC Industries is pleased to announce that they have successfully completed their AS9100 registration effective on July 31, 2010. CNC Industries had previously been certified to the ISO9001:2008 standard – the AS9100 certification is recognized as including all aspects of the ISO 9001 certification as well. SGS served as the registrar and auditor for CNC Industries.

CNC Industries, established in 1995, specializes in precision machining, milling, turning, and assembly of custom parts for the aerospace and defense industries. The company uses the latest machinery as well as custom written ERP software to facilitate high levels of quality demanded by their customers. CNC Industries has a 35,000 square foot facility on the north side of Fort Wayne, IN.

AS9100 certification is an international standard for quality and management systems for the Aircraft, Space and Defense Industries. CNC Industries’ Vice President of operations, Dustin Kimbrell, has said “The implementation of AS9100 standards throughout the company has helped to make us a successful supplier to many aircraft and defense contractors. We are better able to serve our customers needs and expectations through our internal processes and systems at this point than we have ever been. We have become the premier supplier for many of our customers, and the AS9100 certification is another indication of our commitment to always uphold a superior level of quality throughout our production processes.”

By becoming AS9100 certified CNC Industries joins a small group of companies that demonstrate their superior quality management systems. In Fort Wayne, only 7 companies are AS9100 certified – of which only 3 of these companies are local businesses. CNC Industries is the only precision machine shop in Fort Wayne to become AS9100 certified. In all of Indiana only slightly over 100 companies have managed to become certified to the full AS9100 level.

CNC Industries attributes much of its success in obtaining the AS9100 certification to its’ internal ERP system called Job Manager. Steven Deam Jr, the IT Administrator at CNC comments, “The ability to adapt our software systems to the higher standards of AS9100 regulations has allowed us to adjust our processes to the increased demands placed upon us by increasingly complex parts and orders. Our customers expect high levels of quality and service. With Job Manager we are able to meet their stringent quality and service requirements while additionally offering them better overall pricing”.

For more information regarding CNC Industries Inc., please refer to the company web site: http://www.cncind.com or call 260.490.5700 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 260.490.5700 end_of_the_skype_highlighting.

For additional information about SGS visit .

August 12th, 2010|

CNC Industries’ Stimulus Sign – One Year Later

By Steven Deam, Sr. – CNC Industries, Inc. Fort Wayne, Indiana

August 7, 2010

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One year ago I place a banner in front of our company that expressed my frustration over the $787 billion dollar “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009”. It was my belief that the so-called “stimulus bill” would do very little to “stimulate” the economy. Why? Because I thought it was very much misdirected.

The stimulus bill was touted as being used for mostly “shovel ready projects”. Even on the surface of it that didn’t make much sense to me. Since we were in the grip of a very broad-based recession, which was impacting almost all professions, what was everyone supposed to do – become construction workers? What about all the people in a wide variety of other professions who found themselves unemployed? How was the much touted ARRA going to help them?

Now, a year later, we know the answer…. the Recovery Act was a big failure. Not only did it not bring unemployment down and stimulate the economy, the opposite has happened. Is the country any better off today than it was a year ago? I suppose a few segments of the population might say yes it is. But I venture to say that the vast majority of people believe we are much worse off, for a number of very important reasons. And what do we have to show for the hundreds of billions of dollars in TARP, ARRA, and all of the other spending? Nothing but an astronomical debt! And now, at the mid-term elections they expect us to re-elect them??

During a recent trip my wife and I saw at least a half dozen signs saying: “This project was paid for by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009”. I guess my wife and I think differently than our esteemed politicians do. Instead of making us feel good about all of the money that was spent, those signs were nothing more than a reminder to us of how wasteful our government is. Let’s at least hope that some privately owned sign shops have been stimulated by all of the signage business. I hear the signs were very expensive!

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August 7th, 2010|

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|

Precision Aerospace Machining and the Seven Wastes of Lean Manufacturing (part 6)

The sixth waste that we will examine is that of over-processing. The definition of over-processing is to do more work on a piece than is required by the customer. In the simplest explanation this is simply anything done to the part that does not add value to the product. A good – and controversial – example of over-processing a part is inspection.

Pretty much everyone would agree (I assume) that inspection is a necessary part of the process of precision manufacturing. When it comes to precision aerospace parts, it is difficult to imagine shipping parts without a full detailed inspection. The consequence of a defective part could be catastrophic – so we inspect everything. However in the process of inspection, assuming that the part is manufactured properly and passes inspection, nothing is done to increase the value to the customer. The part is exactly the same after inspection as it was before.

There are many other ways to over-process a precision machined part. Using tools that are more expensive than necessary, running machines too slow, over-engineering the fixtures, holding a tolerance beyond what is necessary for function, or a number of other problems. Of all of the wastes, I think that over-processing may be the most difficult to eliminate, or even identify at times.

The approach that we take at CNC Industries to eliminate over-processing starts before we run the first part of the first batch that we produce. Before any new part is produced, we conduct a ‘pre-flight meeting’ in which we examine all aspects of the part. We will look into all of the common areas of over-processing and ensure that steps are taken to prevent over-processing. Once a consensus process is established and reviewed to ensure that it will be ‘lean’ enough, we enter the router information into Job Manager 2, our ERP system. At this time the process established will be on record for each involved party – from purchasing to final shipping, all processes have been reviewed to eliminate over-processing, as well as the other wastes.

With our electronic information system we are able to continually review the established processes quickly and thoroughly. Every employee in the company is also able to suggest improvements – which has many times lead to a reduction of waste – often through elimination of over-processing. With over-processing waste it is critical to constantly be looking for a better way to produce the parts. The effects of over-processing can be very expensive, but it is often hard to detect.

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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 25th, 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: AS 9100|

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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June 18th, 2010|Tags: Aerospace Machining, Custom Machined Parts, ERP, Job Manager, Lean Manufacturing, wastes|

Precision Aerospace Machining and the seven wastes of lean manufacturing (part 4)

The 4th waste identified in lean manufacturing is Motion. Motion concerns the ergonomics of the workers in a process and any unnecessary steps or movement that they have in the process.

To again look at the difference of a high mix / low volume precision aerospace machining facility and a high volume production we will see a difference in the ability to reduce motion. In a high volume production environment you can count on a particular workstation being focused on a single task – even if that task is performed over a variety of individual parts, the motions and the ergonomics will be similar. In a low volume precision machine shop, the task on one day may be entirely different than the task of the prior day. While they will be related still – depending on the functionality of the machine at the workstation – the individual parts may require a significant difference in motion or handling.

To compensate for this changing process, CNC industries has designed it’s facility to accommodate a high mix of precision parts easily. While the information and documentation may vary from one part to another, we have standardized the method of getting that information into electronic information stations which are uniformly located near the workstations. Each worker in our facility may count on being able to get all necessary work instructions in the same way.

We have also standardized our machine setups with the tooling being handle off of the machine to eliminate unnecessary motion in the setup process. The advantages of removing extra motion include more productivity, less stress on the people involved in the process, as well as lowered chances of errors and mistakes being made. So even with a facility dedicated to fully custom machined parts and prototypes, we can easily remove unnecessary wastes.

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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 14th, 2010|Tags: Aerospace Machining, Document Management, Lean Manufacturing, Precision Machining, Technology|

Precision Aerospace Machining and the Seven Wastes of Lean Manufacturing (part 7)

The final of the seven wastes that we are looking at is waiting. Any time that a part is waiting is additional time that you are holding the costs of the part without receiving the income of the part. Waiting, as we have identified it internally comes from three main places: 1) having a part or batch finish with one machine and the next machine required for the part is not available and 2) any part that is in a batch but is not currently being machined, 3) inventory.

The first of these items is very self-explanatory. A batch of parts sitting by a machine waiting to be run through that machine is very obviously waiting. What is a bit less obvious is that even while the batch is being machined, the majority of the parts are still waiting. If there is a batch of 500 parts that each take 1 minute to complete an operation then at minimum each part will have 499 minutes of waiting while the rest are getting machined.

In any production facility where resources are shared between multiple batches / parts, it is extremely difficult to schedule all of the jobs so that no part is ever waiting at all. In fact this scenario is used to illustrate a difficult to impossible problem to solve with computers – known as the Job Shop Problem. This problem may be especially difficult in the aerospace machining industry. With long lead times and large numbers of operations requiring many different resources, scheduling jobs to move through the shop at the best possible rate is exceptionally difficult.

At CNC Industries we address the problem of time wasted while a part is waiting in several different ways. One of the main approaches is our design of a universal fixturing system. We have designed a system of attaching fixtures to our milling machines that will allow a fixture to be machine independent in it’s use. We may design a fixture assuming that the part will be run in one of our Haas VF-2 Superspeed machines, but find that our Toyoda Horizontal is a better choice. With our universal fixturing system we can easily move the part to the most appropriate machine at the correct time and with minimal disruption.

Additionally we focus on redundant machines. Our capacity for production needs to be unaffected by any downtime that a given machine may have. We keep all of our machines well-maintained to prevent any problems, but there is on way to completely prevent down-time. With redundant machines we have the security of knowing that we are not going to be in trouble meeting our deadlines if a machine has any unexpected down-times.

Finally we have worked very hard to get our batch sizes as small as is reasonably possible while also reducing the setup time of each batch. This allows us to eliminate a sizable portion of each part waiting while the rest of the parts in the batch are being machined. The smaller batch sizes also help us to reduce our inventory and prevent the third source of waiting that we have identified.

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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 9th, 2010|

Precision Aerospace Machining and the Seven Wastes of Lean (Part 3)

In continuing on the Lean Journey, we will talk about the third of seven wastes: Inventory. Historically, inventory was not considered a waste. Large batch manufacturing was a necessity at the beginning of modern machining and manufacturing. Inventory stocks were considered healthy as they indicated that a business could ship to their customers quickly. The story of Inventory becoming considered a waste starts in post WWII Japan. Japan underwent a transformation in their productivity and processes after WWII and began to compete well on the world market. Unfortunately Japan does not have the land area that America does, and therefore the cost of holding inventory was much greater – due to the higher property costs, etc. Toyoda quickly realized that smaller batches, when made efficiently, lead to lower overall costs than large batches do.

In a precision aerospace machining environment, a balancing act is needed. Since CNC Industries machines a large variety of precision parts we cannot afford to have a specialized machine for each part or process that we do. Small machine shops also do not have the luxury of a rolling assembly line between our machines. With these restrictions, and the large amount of processing and manufacturing time that it takes to make a single aerospace part, we are put into a more difficult position that a production facility. We cannot truly operate with no inventory as the goal would be, so we must decide on the ideal inventory to keep on hand.

Precision aerospace machining processes typically have rather long setup times relative to simpler machining processes. This causes the ideal batch size to increase in order to compensate for the lost time on the machine while it is down for setup. At CNC Industries we have worked long and hard to decrease our setup times and have successfully lowered our setup time by 75% over the last 5 years. This has enable us to lower the ideal batch size as well, which in turn allows us to hold less inventory.

In addition to the setup process improvements that we have made over the years, information management is key to efficiently running small batches. Smaller batches will mean more switchovers, more setups, and more jobs running at the same time. With all of these issues, scheduling is both critical and difficult. Job Manager II allows us to have a visual reference of the schedule at any computer throughout our facility and quickly identifies and problems or potential problems at an early stage of the process which allows us to quickly make any necessary adjustments.

June 7th, 2010|Tags: Aerospace Machining, Custom Machined Parts, inventory, Lean Manufacturing, Precision Machining, the seven wastes|

About Steven Deam