Capitol Stampings Corp. receives ISO 9001: 2015 Certification

PRESS RELEASE

The Right Approach Consulting

July 31, 2018

Milwaukee, WI

 

Capitol Stampings Corp. receives ISO 9001: 2015 Certification

I am proud to announce that client Capitol Stampings Corp. has received certification to ISO 9001: 2015 from registrar TUV. The company has a strong quality history from many years of certification to prior revisions of the standard, and the upgrade to 2015 was extremely smooth. Quality Manager Mike Teas, Engineer John Willmering and the entire CSC team were highly engaged and instrumental in the success of the process.

About Capitol Stampings Corp. from President Gary Wenzel

You might have noticed our tagline “Beyond Components” and wondered what does that mean?

At Capitol Stampings we believe in providing the best possible business solution to make us both successful. Let me outline some of our capabilities to show you what I mean.

  • Our manufacturing flexibility allows us to produce products from low to high volumes
  • Bar coded serialization provides product traceability from raw material to finished goods
  • Punch press capacity up to 1000 tons with back up capability for most presses
  • Technologically advanced – utilizing robotic press tending systems
  • Power product expertise with pulley and sprocket applications
  • Capable of handling extensive stamping programs both new and existing
  • Inventory management programs to ensure timely deliveries
  • Assembly capabilities reduce your SKU’s
  • Ability to outsource both locally and internationally

I invite you to visit our modern 181,000 square foot manufacturing facility in the near future. You will also find a lot of other information on our website including our other two companies Steel Craft Corp. and Hartford Finishing.

 

For more information go to https://capitolstampings.com

 

Contact TRAC

Contact me for all of your QMS needs.

Steve@tracQMS.com

920-841-3478

 

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Prototron Redmond receives ISO 9001: 2015 Certification

PRESS RELEASE

The Right Approach Consulting

July 18, 2018

Redmond, WA

Prototron Redmond receives ISO 9001: 2015 Certification

I am proud to announce that client Prototron Circuits Redmond has received certification to ISO 9001: 2015 from registrar BSI. The company had a strong quality foundation going in from many years of certification to prior revisions of the standard, and the transition was fairly straight forward. Quality Manager Jackson Mason, Quality Systems Manager Shawn Elsberry and the Prototron Redmond team were instrumental in the success of the process, and got the job done without a hitch in an expedited timeframe.

This comes on the heels of the certifications sister company Prototron Tucson recently received for AS9100D & MIL-PRF-31032.

About Prototron Circuits

With over 30 years in business, Prototron Circuits is one of the industry leaders when it comes to High Technology Quick Turn Printed Circuits boards. Their continued outstanding performance (98%+ Quality and Delivery) has made them a true preferred source of all companies needing reliable QTA PCBs. And now with their new global sourcing solution, Prototron Circuits is truly America’s board source.

With facilities in Redmond, Washington and Tucson, Arizona Prototron Circuits is the acknowledged leader when it comes to high technology quick turn prototype PCBs. Because of their focus on the hi-mix low-volume market they see thousands of new part numbers and data packages, which led to the upcoming publication of their book The Printed Circuit Board Designer’s Guide to Producing the Perfect Data Package.

For more information go to www.prototron.com

Visit the Prototron Circuits company page on LinkedIn

PCB Designers are welcome to join the “PCB Bare Board Truth” Group on LinkedIn

 

Contact TRAC

Contact me for all of your QMS needs.

Steve@tracQMS.com

920-841-3478

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NEW trac Contact Information

You spoke, I listened!

What my customers tell me most often, well, actually right after they say, “We are really glad we hired you” is “Steve, your email and website address is too damn long!”.

I thought hmmmm, since a core principle of trac is the ability to simplify your quality system, I really should apply this to my website.

So, I purchased a new domain and everything is transferred and up & running. The 26 letter “TheRightApproachConsulting” has been replaced with the 7 letter “tracQMS”.

trac is who we are, QMS is what we do.

Company name, phone and everything else is the same.

Steve@tracQMS.com

www.tracQMS.com

Contact TRAC for all your QMS needs.

Please update your contact information and send me an email to get started on a new project.

 

 

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What Designers Need to Know about PCB Fab

One of the biggest issues in our industry is the lack of understanding by designers of the printed circuit board manufacturing process. My colleague Mark Thompson of Prototron Circuits published an article recently with the above title that I urge every PCB designer to read, or read again right here http://www.iconnect007.com/index.php/article/110975/mark-thompson-what-designers-need-to-know-about-fab/110978/?skin=design#110975.

In the article, Mark discusses many of the most frequent questions asked by designers when launching a new design with a PCB fabricator. This is a great, quick read that will provide some insight into issues that can delay a quote or impact manufacturability.

It is a sufficient teaser to Mark’s new book set to launch later this month titled: The Printed Circuit Board Designer’s Guide to Producing the Perfect Data Package. Download your copy as soon as it’s available!

920-841-3478

Steve@TheRightApproachConsulting.com

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Capturing Tribal Knowledge

“It’s all to do with the training: you can do a lot if you’re properly trained.”Elizabeth II, Queen of Great Britain and Northern Ireland made this salient proclamation over 50 years ago. What has held true over the ages is not a secret; people perform better when properly trained.

Tribal Knowledge is Key to QMS

Walk the Walk

Training is often an afterthought in many organizations, and the longer a company has been in business; the more this seems to apply. While assessing literally over 1.000 companies over the past couple of decades, it has been amazing to observe that the biggest offenders of this are the companies that overuse the sound bite “Our most important asset is our people”. When you really dig into the process and peel back the onion, it is clear that their commitment to training is not commensurate with that statement. No matter what you call it: training, coaching, mentoring, etc., what we are really talking about is turning people into a competitive advantage.

A keystone of a world-class organization is the depth and breadth of the training program. Training can be defined as learning that is provided in order to improve performance on the present job. A well-managed program in a printed circuit board fabricator can mean the difference between average and outstanding, performance. Of course this applies to every industry, but with up to 60 different possible processes combined with the degree of difficulty required to produce today’s printed circuit boards, it takes on exponential importance.

Typical Scenario

The following conversation has been repeated many times, and may sound familiar:

Supplier: “This is Larry; he is our best plater and runs this department.”

Customer: “Can I see his training file documenting that Larry is a certified operator for plating?”

Supplier: “Uh, we don’t really have a certified operator program, but Larry IS the trainer for plating and every operator is trained by Larry. He could make up every one of these baths from scratch.”

Customer:  “How do you know when an operator is ready to work on his or her own?

Supplier: Larry says so. He also personally reviews and approves every single job that is released from plating to assure quality.”

Customer: “What happens if one of my jobs is scheduled to be plated when Larry is on vacation or sick?”

Supplier: (Silence)

Customer: “Exactly.”

In the above scenario both the company and its employees tend to view training negatively, even insulting; some form of remedial action. This perception couldn’t be further from the truth! One of the greatest advantages of training in this situation is to capture the tribal knowledgeof the highly-skilled workforce. What I mean by tribal knowledge is the entirety of people like Larry’s expertise, experience, tricks of the trade, and the idiosyncrasies of the job that have been learned over the last 30 years that are probably not documented anywhere. Preserving this tribal knowledge and turning it into a training competitive advantage is critical to a company’s long-term survival.

This particular problem is compounded with high employee turnover during times of uncertain economic environments. This logic becomes fatal when long-term employees begin retiring, and that tribal knowledge is lost forever. It has become all too common to witness companies, in an effort to cut costs, offering earlier retirement (or worse) to long-term experienced employees so that they can replace them with younger, inexpensive new employees. What these companies fail to realize, until it is too late, is that this strategy severely backfires as decades of experience and tribal knowledge walks out the door with the employees. Many of the businesses that have not survived the recent economic cycles were companies that had been successful for 30 plus years until several “Larrys” began to retire. Others that have survived have never fully captured all of the tribal knowledge that left with their best employees.

I will end this column as I began it, with another timeless quote. Perhaps Confucius was speaking about the importance of participative employee training when, 2,500 years ago, he stated, “What I hear, I forget. What I see, I remember. What I do, I understand.”

Give me a call to start turning your employees into a competitive advantage!

920-841-3478

Steve@TheRightApproachConsulting.com

 

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All Roads Lead to the Customer

Satisfying the customer IS main objective of any QMS.

The term customer service is quickly being replaced in today’s business environment with customer excellence. Arguably, all organizational activities revolve around satisfying the customer, and a continuous improvement program is a powerful vehicle to assure this result. If you break it down, all profits come from the customer, not from products and services. An argument could be made that a satisfied customer is just one that is not yet dissatisfied! Customer service is no guarantee of customer retention, customer excellence is a differentiator. This must be a strategic initiative integrated into planning along with profitability, ROI, and market share. This is where a comprehensive continuous improvement program comes in. A continuous improvement program can minimize (if not eliminate) the performance detractors of waste, rework and lost time, while developing employees capable of capitalizing on today’s opportunities and effectively meeting tomorrow’s challenges.

I think it appropriate to end this column with a quote from Jim Hudon, of Hudon Associates; “If you think your operation is the best that it can be, you have opened the door to a competitor to out-do you.”

Contact TRAC

Give me a call to achieve Customer Excellence in your company!

920-841-3478

Steve@TheRightApproachConsulting.com

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Stop talking and start listening

Today in my daily newsletter from I-Connect007 I read a publication from Dan Beaulieu with the above title, which immediately got my attention http://www.iconnect007.com/index.php/column/22/it39s-only-common-sense/25/?skin=pcb#110669. Dan is a colleague and friend, but also one of my mentors so I tend to read everything I can that he publishes. As a sales & marketing expert, his focus was, of course, on getting sales people to shut up and listen to their customers.

However, as I read the article I found myself guilty of violating every single one of his attributes that define a poor listener. This was hard to swallow as I make my living listening to customers. Even after I read the article, as a client was sitting across from me telling a personal story today, I couldn’t wait for him to finish so I could relay a similar story about myself. I really do know better, but bad habits die hard.

Dan’s points are not a sales thing, they apply to all of us, no matter what side of the table we sit on. How many times have we been talking to someone but not really “present”, looking around, checking our watch, phone or door? We owe it to the other person to give them our full attention and really listen. From my personal standpoint, how can I offer a customer the “right approach” if I really haven’t heard what their problem is? I can’t, so I am firing up my iPad and buying the Tom Peters and Richard Branson books Dan mentioned immediately.

Do yourself a favor and read Dan’s article at the above link. It will be the best 10  minutes you have spent in a very long time.

Give me a call and I promise to listen!

920-841-3478

Steve@TheRightApproachConsulting.com

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Lessons from Lombardi

It occurred to me after reading an article in the local paper recently that solid management fundamentals are timeless and cross all industries. It is critical that an organization have a foundation based on a practical management game plan to be in the chase for excellence.

Old School = New School

The article I am referring to was titled “Would Vince Lombardi be successful in today’s NFL?” by the sports writer Gary D’ Amato of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel newspaper. Now, I have no fondness for this particular politically skewed publication, however, the sports reporting has always been very good. Around here in my home state of Wisconsin, the mere mention of Saint Vinny generally elicits a reverent hush, recollections of legendary Packer moments, and the occasional genuflection from the old-timers. For those of you with your football heads in the sand, Vincent Thomas Lombardi built one of the greatest dynasties in sports history in the 1960s about 90 miles north of my home. Vince would have been 100 years old today.

The article noted the facts that NFL players today are bigger, stronger and faster, and that the offensive and defensive schemes were a magnitude more complicated than in Vince’s day.  Also discussed was just how modern players, especially “me generation” football divas like Colin Kaepernick, Martellus Bennett, Jay Cutler, and Chad Ochocinco Johnson, would react to Lombardi’s demanding, no excuses, winning is everything coaching style. The answer is that Vince Lombardi would most certainly be not only successful today, but I would bet a boatload of beer that he could lead a modern-day team to a world championship. How is this possible? Because Lombardi’s success was built on the foundation of fundamentals; hard work, discipline, flawless execution and the pursuit of excellence-building blocks that never go out of style.

Looking at the lessons of Lombardi’s success, it is clear that his philosophy is not football, or even sports-centric, but applies to any business, organization, service and industry that is willing to embrace it. I challenge you to step out of your “Lombardi is football” mentality and take a fresh look at what can be learned and applied to your business from the legend.

Lessons from Lombardi

It’s about Winning

Lombardi saw the importance of winning in any game; in life and so on. He couldn’t accept defeat as final and he had a single-minded focus when it came to winning football games.  As a leader, it is important to understand that people want to be part of a winning team; which requires a winning attitude. Lead by example, being positive while at the same time persistent. In whatever thing you want to do, there will be resistance and you need that winning attitude to breakthrough and reach your goal with your team.

What it Takes to be Number One

Lombardi famously stated “Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all the time thing. You don’t win once in a while; you don’t do things right once in a while; you do them right all the time.” This speaks to the culture of an organization, whether the organization is a football team or a printed circuit manufacturer. A winning culture is an attitude that needs to lived and breathed by every single employee, every single day.

Outwork Everyone

Lombardi knew that the price of success was hard work, hard work, and hard work. He lived and breathed it with his teams, and this discipline helped them win their championships. You cannot bypass hard work; hard work is the shortest path to success. Show your team the value of hard work by personal example; and as you lead by hard work, your team will follow.

Teamwork is Essential

Lombardi recognized the importance of teamwork and he made sure each and every player understood that “there is no I in team”. No matter how you say it, 2 + 2 = 5; two heads are better than one or synergy, Lombardi saw that teamwork was the only way to win, whether it was in the game, or in life.

KISS

Lombardi’s Packers had only a handful of plays and none of them were overly complicated. He had no laminated cards nor did his players have flip over wrist bands listing dozens of plays with multiple options. However, the few that he did have were constantly and passionately enforced and practiced until it became second nature to every single player. Simplicity all but eliminated all misunderstandings and confusion so that everyone was literally “on the same page”.

Chase Perfection

Several former Packer players have described Lombardi’s practice regime of how they would run one rather simple offensive play dozens of times in a single practice until every individual player executed his assignment flawlessly. Over and over and over again with not a single mistake being overlooked or tolerated. Games were exactly the same: mistakes that weren’t tolerated in a loss weren’t tolerated in a win either. Lombardi’s premise was that no team or individual has ever come even close to perfection by accident; the only chance of ever reaching perfection is to actively and constantly chase it.

Look in the Mirror

I would again challenge you to take a look at these Lessons from Lombardi and find any one of these that doesn’t, or shouldn’t, apply to your organization. BTW, ESPN just voted Lombardi the greatest coach in NFL history.

As the great Vince Lombardi once said, “Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.”

Give me a call to help you start chasing perfection!

 920-841-3478

Steve@TheRightApproachConsulting.com

 

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Best Practice, Not Inspection

The alternative to inspection is simple, applying the appropriate best practice tools to drive to true root cause to permanently eliminate profit-sucking process problems from your operation.

Let’s take a macro look at where companies spend their money in terms of the cost of quality. The cost of quality refers to costs related to prevention, appraisal (inspection), rework, and scrap (customer returns are factored into either rework or scrap). The above figure shows the relative distribution of expenditures in a typical company, with largest portion of expense resulting from bad quality (scrap). The traditional business will spend about three times the amount of money on appraisal (inspection) than they do on prevention. When you combine appraisal costs with the exponential amount of dollars that are being wasted on rework and scrap, it is clear that this is not an effective model.

Now, contrast that with the lean business model. By spending a majority of their expenditures on prevention, appraisal costs can be greatly reduced, and rework and scrap are maintained at minimal levels. Not only are the dollars being spent in the right places, consider the order of magnitude of total cost. ALL the costs in the lean business model, combined, amount to less than the money a traditional company is wasting in scrap alone. Talk about financial metrics; these savings transfer directly to bottom line profit!

I will close with a quote that sums up this whole discussion in one sentence by one of the true greats:

“The most dangerous kind of waste is the waste we do not recognize.”

–Dr. Shigeo Shingo, Consultant to Toyota Motor Corporation.

Call me to talk about reducing inspection in your operation.

920-841-3478

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Inspection Is Evil

A wise man once said “Inspection is Evil”; …actually it was me and I didn’t say it just once, I say it every chance I get. Inspection is a non value-add activity and companies tend to use it to hide many sins. Traditionally, leaders of American industry have had a one-size fits all solution to just about any manufacturing problem they encounter; throw more inspectors at it. Customer returns increase and/or internal yields decrease; “Let’s hire more inspectors to make sure our customers do not receive the results of our inefficient process.” Whether you find bad parts internally or ship them, the customer is paying for your process inefficiencies either by defects, or the cost of your inspection, rework and repair. I am here to tell you that this approach simply does not work, and I will prove it to you shortly.

1. From a functional standpoint, there are three types of inspection: Judgment/Standard Inspection
2. Informative Inspection
3. Point of Origin Inspection

The first two are widely used and considered traditional methods of quality control. Point of Origin Inspection is the only method that actually eliminates defects by putting the responsibility for quality back at the manufacturing source, quality assurance.

Not only is inspection non value-add, it is ineffective as well! How effective would you think visual inspection is? Would you be surprised if I said that 100% visual inspection is only 80-85% effective! Don’t believe me? Consider this: I have administered an exercise I like to call “Steve’s F Test”. Using a minimum of 30 people (for statistical significance) that are my “F Inspectors”, I have them read a paragraph inspecting it for the presence of the letter “F”. In over 100 exercises the results are eerily consistent: the mean inspection accuracy is only around 55%, with a range typically of 33% – 75% that follows a normal bell-shaped distribution. And this is after only 60 seconds; imagine the drop in effectiveness after 7 hours due to distractions and fatigue!

Saving pennies at the expense of dollars by employing excessive inspection, I would argue, is one of the more hidden destroyers of profits in any organization. Indeed, inspection is evil.

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