Striving to achieve your vision

To recap, last month’s column discussed the benefits of end-of-year shop reorganization, which in our case involved simple projects that had a big impact. With all the rearranging, painting and cleaning ended, my military commander dad had successfully completed his mission and returned to a life of retirement.

Interestingly, even after being in business for many years, we’re still evolving to fulfill our ultimate vision. We’re still working to become a company that provides such a high level of service and quality that we have the luxury of cherry-picking the projects of our choosing and can comfortably say no to others.

With the first reorganization round completed, including a freshly tidied up and more effectively arranged shop, we’re looking forward to engaging in regular production again and seeing a return on investment.

My January to-do list includes more office functions and less shop floor work, and the employees are understandably relieved. The office functions involve further optimization of our software system, including the implementation of advanced tools such as scheduling and better QA document control.

Other important items include adding touch probes to our CNC mills and experimenting with new cutting tools. Setting aside time with tooling vendors to brainstorm about the latest tricks of the trade is helpful, and my shop supervisors appreciate the opportunity. Hopefully, they’ll discover techniques that impress customers and management alike. Even some advanced CAD/CAM training is in the cards, particularly with 3-D modeling tools. Getting better trained to utilize these technologies should make for a more productive 2013.

While we can’t predict the future, we can take steps to ensure we’re as prepared for it as possible. As machining and personnel capabilities have improved at our shop, we’ve taken on more complex projects with increasingly stringent requirements.