Shop Tour of S&H Machine

David Fisher began our NTMA tour of S&H Machine with the comment: “I believe in the power of shop tours. From the tours I have taken, I’ve come away with a hundred action items that have benefited S&H”. It was the start of an incredible evening that built upon our great tour of W Machine Works in April and a continuation of our quest to see how the best shops in the region are improving processes in difficult times. If you could not make it ……….

• What is the value of seeing how others have gotten better?
• What happens when your managers see how others are changing culture and becoming more effective?

David welcomes tours from any company -- provided the privilege is returned with a similar tour of the guest facility (even a competitor)! S&H is a family owned machine shop celebrating their 50th year in business. Their customer base may be aerospace, but they are looking to break into other areas that fit their core competencies. They manage towards, slow and steady, growth that has seen their employee count reach 40 people and 5 million in sales. The current year has seen similar sales declines of 20% that many of our companies have seen, but S&H sees incredible opportunities. Much of the optimism centers on customer interest in partnering with S&H because of the visual power of their business plan in action.

Much of their progress in changing company culture and getting employees to share the load of process improvement is build on the 1200 hours of training they invest in their employees. Improvements that measure:

• 99.98 in Product Quality
• 172 DPPM
• 95.5 On Time Delivery

David noted that their finding that customers no longer are impressed by new equipment or technology. Instead they are responding to the control of processes – The demonstration of quality and lean through work instructions.

Employees never leave their machines (except for restroom breaks). A runner takes everything (material, first articles, tools, ect….) to the machine.

S&H has developed their own ERP system that is basically…..outrageous! While it has far too many features to cover, the Apple based infrastructure has nice things like pictures of the part and what the part should like at an operation sequence on the face of the planning page. Additionally large screen TVs provide a visual shop floor communication tool and schedule board.

The 5’s are all throughout the shop. Everything has its place and because he has asked employees to take their personal tools and “stuff” home, the shop has no clutter.

The show piece at S&H is their state-of-the-art MAM that runs unmanned 24-7 on their long term programs. Fisher notes that part volume is no longer a major factor, only long term commitments from the customer.

As mentioned earlier, S&H has made a significant effort to reach out to employees in order to eliminate work related cultural differences. Two employee meetings per month, including a company sponsored lunch, provide a consistent flow of information to the shop employees and build the S&H team spirit. Outcomes flow from a commitment to 50% change…. S&H encourages change not perfection…. They continue to pocket the incremental improvements that come from both their successes and mistakes.

David summarized some of their successes by stating:

1. When the owner participated it helped employee buy-in
2. Consistently train
3. Communicate often
4. Creating standard tools was our first big win
5. Implementing the runner was the second biggest victory

Thanks to David Fisher and his staff for making this a great event. The items on this sheet are but a small portion of the “take-a-ways” attendees found.

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