Precision Machining Archives - Page 2 of 2

Evaluating a Precision Machine Shop

At CNC Industries, as a precision machine shop are very interested in how we are evaluated for performance. Traditionally machine shops are evaluated on the basis of
their ability to make the parts to specification. While this is still a critical component to a machine shop, we do not feel that it adequately addresses all of the issues.

Precision Machining is certainly based on the actual manufacturing of the parts, the intangibles are as critical to the overall performance of the machine shop itself. Questions that should be asked include:

Is the company adequately addressing any problems or concerns that come up?
Does the company follow best practice guidelines?
Does the company maintain it’s manufacturing equipment well?
Does the machine shop treat it’s customers with honesty and integrity?
Does the company perform to it’s promised delivery dates?
if a delivery date is going to be missed for any reason, does the shop notify the customer of the delay?
Does the company follow industry standards such as ISO 9001 and others?

Of course there could be many more questions that need to be addressed to fully evaluate a company. But the main issue is that, even in a precision machine shop, it is important to look at the customer service given.

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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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March 3rd, 2010|Tags: evaluating machine shops, management, Precision Machining|

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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March 1st, 2010|Tags: Continuous Improvement, Job Manager, Precision Machining, Technology|

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: AS9100, ISO, Precision Machining|