Skippy: How do you act bigger with critical customer follow up without breaking the budget?
Buzz: As a small to medium size business (or even a small consultant group) you probably realize that in addition to the discipline of an active Customer Relationship Management program spitting out follow up activity, you have actionable follow up as well.
Skippy: Of course, plenty; from having meetings and teleconferences transcribed to keeping on top of customers critical time sensitive contacts to ordering supplies remotely, etc.
Buzz: Check out www.microtasking.net For a nominal charge, just about any customer or vendor follow up activity can be handled once or on a recurring basis on your behalf - think and be big on a small budget -
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Profile extrusion info from NPE 2009
Skippy: Hi all - just back from a productive outing at NPE in Chicago -
Buzz: - I heard the show numbers were really down -
Skippy: Well yes, it did seem that the number of plastics personnel there were highly diminished from what we had observed the last 10 shows in a row back to 1979, but on the other hand, the folks that were there appeared to have a real reason to be there.
Buzz: and so the quality of the contacts was likely to be good?
Skippy: Right. I have a bag full of materials that are coming back from the variety of disciplines we are constantly going through - profile extrusion, thermoforming, injection molding both conventional and low pressure structural foam, and fiberglass composites.
There seemed to be a bigger focus on this show from the vendors on pooling the products (training, controls, common sense shop info etc) into more system wide solutions rather than just selling the newest loader, calibration, etc.
I will be assembling some of the materials regarding the profile extusion elements first and posting soon -
Buzz: - I heard the show numbers were really down -
Skippy: Well yes, it did seem that the number of plastics personnel there were highly diminished from what we had observed the last 10 shows in a row back to 1979, but on the other hand, the folks that were there appeared to have a real reason to be there.
Buzz: and so the quality of the contacts was likely to be good?
Skippy: Right. I have a bag full of materials that are coming back from the variety of disciplines we are constantly going through - profile extrusion, thermoforming, injection molding both conventional and low pressure structural foam, and fiberglass composites.
There seemed to be a bigger focus on this show from the vendors on pooling the products (training, controls, common sense shop info etc) into more system wide solutions rather than just selling the newest loader, calibration, etc.
I will be assembling some of the materials regarding the profile extusion elements first and posting soon -
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Are you maintaining a “Three Legged Stool”?
Buzz - Hey Skippy - seat backs and tray tables up and locked please -
Skippy - say what?
Buzz - Well the travel in today's market is so bumpy and most of us don't have the luxury of having a 'Captain Sully' in the cockpit that it seems prudent to have seating that is firmly grounded.
Skippy - It goes without saying that we have a difficult marketplace at present.
Buzz - Yup, most companies (unfortunately) are in full blown ‘survival mode’; the mode consists mainly of gouging out ‘costs’ so as to live to fight another day.
Skippy - It is important to keep in mind though that doing this without enough introspection is akin to sawing legs off the stool you’re sitting on. You’ll want to maintain at least a ‘three legged stool’ with the three pillars necessary to provide stability over unknown terrain -
Buzz - which are?
Skippy -
A) [quality] sales - to existing and potential customers;
it’s easier to keep a customer than get one;
B) cash flow - you can be making sales and losing money etc.;
it never works out on ‘volume’ and lastly
C) human capital – are the right team members in place?
Buzz - Any suggestions?
Skippy - Rather than focus only on cost cutting, an honest internal assessment should be part of the operations mode at this most important time – does your team have a good handle on:
1. The existing problems that are currently facing your company?
2. The quality of key managers you presently employ?
3. The strengths and weaknesses of your company as seen through the eyes of your customers and employees?
4. The current climate of the company, such as morale and its status?
5. The planning that has occurred up to this point?
6. The attitudes of key managers toward the turn around and growth?
7. The story board material that presently exists(brochures, literature, selling aids, etc.)?
Buzz - Sounds like an assessment of these key factors prior to the coming rebuild is critical to take advantage of better company re-positioning and perhaps re-branding.
Skippy - right; and consider an independent audit. An outside consultant’s report can sometimes be not only revealing but also thought provoking. It may open the eyes of the most astute leadership. You must be prepared for real hidden problems that you might have missed. Moving forward before conducting an independent assessment can be deadly to your rebound and future growth.
Skippy - say what?
Buzz - Well the travel in today's market is so bumpy and most of us don't have the luxury of having a 'Captain Sully' in the cockpit that it seems prudent to have seating that is firmly grounded.
Skippy - It goes without saying that we have a difficult marketplace at present.
Buzz - Yup, most companies (unfortunately) are in full blown ‘survival mode’; the mode consists mainly of gouging out ‘costs’ so as to live to fight another day.
Skippy - It is important to keep in mind though that doing this without enough introspection is akin to sawing legs off the stool you’re sitting on. You’ll want to maintain at least a ‘three legged stool’ with the three pillars necessary to provide stability over unknown terrain -
Buzz - which are?
Skippy -
A) [quality] sales - to existing and potential customers;
it’s easier to keep a customer than get one;
B) cash flow - you can be making sales and losing money etc.;
it never works out on ‘volume’ and lastly
C) human capital – are the right team members in place?
Buzz - Any suggestions?
Skippy - Rather than focus only on cost cutting, an honest internal assessment should be part of the operations mode at this most important time – does your team have a good handle on:
1. The existing problems that are currently facing your company?
2. The quality of key managers you presently employ?
3. The strengths and weaknesses of your company as seen through the eyes of your customers and employees?
4. The current climate of the company, such as morale and its status?
5. The planning that has occurred up to this point?
6. The attitudes of key managers toward the turn around and growth?
7. The story board material that presently exists(brochures, literature, selling aids, etc.)?
Buzz - Sounds like an assessment of these key factors prior to the coming rebuild is critical to take advantage of better company re-positioning and perhaps re-branding.
Skippy - right; and consider an independent audit. An outside consultant’s report can sometimes be not only revealing but also thought provoking. It may open the eyes of the most astute leadership. You must be prepared for real hidden problems that you might have missed. Moving forward before conducting an independent assessment can be deadly to your rebound and future growth.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
"Pita" Management
Skippy – Hey Buzz – Happy New Year. Had someone inquire about "Pita" Management:
“Hi In the molding process when you allow raw material to flow fluently from the extruder at the beginning or end of work you get what we call here a "Pita" It is a big round and hard melted raw material. This raw material is out of the stock but not handled by the shop order and due to that after a while cause mismatch in stock. I would like to hear how do you handle that in your plants and if you have any suggestions for me. Thanks in advance.”
Buzz – Happy New Year as well. Hmm, this question could be looked at two ways – are we talking about the handling, use or disposal of the “pita” or the raw material allocation and subsequent quote effects side?
Skippy – why not both?
Buzz – Ok, from a material handling only point of view, it depends on the condition of the material as is extruded -
In custom shops running multiple materials, it is often that the barrel was given a light coating of a petroleum based product to seal the pores of the barrel. It is a given that your tooling was likely coated with something as well and that you have de-"greased" it etc as you hung and heated up -
A new run of material will pick this up and it is not in your best interest to have petroleum or silicone based products introduced back into your run mix from internally generated scrap - pitch it.
On the other hand, once you are up and running, with a good melt temp, the material can be handled at nearly the correct make up consistency, cool the material by mass quickly, remove water if present and run through granulator being careful to have the resultant regrind not too gummy/sticky - if you generate enough of this due to jamb ups, string ups, etc you may want to consider a "hot granulator" designed to take excess material at or near melt temp . . .
Skippy – okay, how about from a raw material variance standpoint?
Buzz – well, the amount of shop generated regrinds and virgin is a problem that is easy to overcome in your MRP or ERP process with a little examination of your particular system, some history analysis and a slight 'adjustment percentage' to your allocation table from the BOM..
It sounds like you have two major issues -
The first is COST for quoting, and the second is ACCURACY for material allocations.
Material allocations (probably the more important on a month to month basis):
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Assuming that you have a costed bill of materials for each product, each would call for "X" pounds or kilos of plastic per some measure - thousand feet, 100 meters etc. Unless you have a VERY sophisticated MRP system, you probably have variances month to month in virgin to regrinds before any losses -
There are several losses that occur that belong in the BOM but generally are excluded until the problem becomes so large that it is hard to miss -
1) "Pita"s or start up scrap or jamb ups etc are all "losses" unless recaptured as I indicated in the original reply. If they are ground up and re-run, no loss exists and no variance is expected. For this exercise, we will assume that they are always losses
2) scrap that is lost in and around the granulator - it is rare that material isn't spilled on the floor and swept up, or vacuumed up when cleaning a granulator and going from one material to another or regular maintenance - what happens to it? Unless you re-wash, dry and reuse, again, loss
3) In extrusion, and vacuum or thermoforming versus injection molding, saw shavings, and tool cut offs end up on the floor as saw dust, trims etc. These can be or are losses as well unless recovered.
The closest MOSTLY correct answer is to do a scrupulous study by product - measure all inputs, all saved product, all by product wastes and losses as above, then calculate the % of loss as a measure of the total amount of material consumed and either
a) Increase the raw material per measure in each BOM by the same percentage or
the NEXT most correct answer is to do a scrupulous monthly study on the weights of all final products (net) by raw materials, and using the following formulas -
Beginning inventory + Purchases - minus ending inventory is Material Consumed. (Gross)
Material Consumed - net weight of all saved parts for shipment is Actual Material Used for Product and what ever is left is what was LOST.
LOST/Material consumed is the percentage that each Bill of Material should be increased by (average) to predict material allocations more closely.
--------------
Quoting:
--------------
This same exercise for a year would probably yield that your losses in aggregate are likely in the 1-3% range in a fairly clean well run shop. In this case, you would want to increase the raw material cost component in your quotes by the same or slightly more (slightly more is more likely to leave a little wiggle room until you find all the losses) than the aggregate loss. In this way, you know you aren't going to automatically get a "SURPRISE" loss in margin of 1-3% at year end.
Note that none of this discussion focuses on Regrind availability or max percentage usable. These discussions are beyond the scope of this simple answer.
I hope this simple explanation works. Good luck.
“Hi In the molding process when you allow raw material to flow fluently from the extruder at the beginning or end of work you get what we call here a "Pita" It is a big round and hard melted raw material. This raw material is out of the stock but not handled by the shop order and due to that after a while cause mismatch in stock. I would like to hear how do you handle that in your plants and if you have any suggestions for me. Thanks in advance.”
Buzz – Happy New Year as well. Hmm, this question could be looked at two ways – are we talking about the handling, use or disposal of the “pita” or the raw material allocation and subsequent quote effects side?
Skippy – why not both?
Buzz – Ok, from a material handling only point of view, it depends on the condition of the material as is extruded -
In custom shops running multiple materials, it is often that the barrel was given a light coating of a petroleum based product to seal the pores of the barrel. It is a given that your tooling was likely coated with something as well and that you have de-"greased" it etc as you hung and heated up -
A new run of material will pick this up and it is not in your best interest to have petroleum or silicone based products introduced back into your run mix from internally generated scrap - pitch it.
On the other hand, once you are up and running, with a good melt temp, the material can be handled at nearly the correct make up consistency, cool the material by mass quickly, remove water if present and run through granulator being careful to have the resultant regrind not too gummy/sticky - if you generate enough of this due to jamb ups, string ups, etc you may want to consider a "hot granulator" designed to take excess material at or near melt temp . . .
Skippy – okay, how about from a raw material variance standpoint?
Buzz – well, the amount of shop generated regrinds and virgin is a problem that is easy to overcome in your MRP or ERP process with a little examination of your particular system, some history analysis and a slight 'adjustment percentage' to your allocation table from the BOM..
It sounds like you have two major issues -
The first is COST for quoting, and the second is ACCURACY for material allocations.
Material allocations (probably the more important on a month to month basis):
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Assuming that you have a costed bill of materials for each product, each would call for "X" pounds or kilos of plastic per some measure - thousand feet, 100 meters etc. Unless you have a VERY sophisticated MRP system, you probably have variances month to month in virgin to regrinds before any losses -
There are several losses that occur that belong in the BOM but generally are excluded until the problem becomes so large that it is hard to miss -
1) "Pita"s or start up scrap or jamb ups etc are all "losses" unless recaptured as I indicated in the original reply. If they are ground up and re-run, no loss exists and no variance is expected. For this exercise, we will assume that they are always losses
2) scrap that is lost in and around the granulator - it is rare that material isn't spilled on the floor and swept up, or vacuumed up when cleaning a granulator and going from one material to another or regular maintenance - what happens to it? Unless you re-wash, dry and reuse, again, loss
3) In extrusion, and vacuum or thermoforming versus injection molding, saw shavings, and tool cut offs end up on the floor as saw dust, trims etc. These can be or are losses as well unless recovered.
The closest MOSTLY correct answer is to do a scrupulous study by product - measure all inputs, all saved product, all by product wastes and losses as above, then calculate the % of loss as a measure of the total amount of material consumed and either
a) Increase the raw material per measure in each BOM by the same percentage or
the NEXT most correct answer is to do a scrupulous monthly study on the weights of all final products (net) by raw materials, and using the following formulas -
Beginning inventory + Purchases - minus ending inventory is Material Consumed. (Gross)
Material Consumed - net weight of all saved parts for shipment is Actual Material Used for Product and what ever is left is what was LOST.
LOST/Material consumed is the percentage that each Bill of Material should be increased by (average) to predict material allocations more closely.
--------------
Quoting:
--------------
This same exercise for a year would probably yield that your losses in aggregate are likely in the 1-3% range in a fairly clean well run shop. In this case, you would want to increase the raw material cost component in your quotes by the same or slightly more (slightly more is more likely to leave a little wiggle room until you find all the losses) than the aggregate loss. In this way, you know you aren't going to automatically get a "SURPRISE" loss in margin of 1-3% at year end.
Note that none of this discussion focuses on Regrind availability or max percentage usable. These discussions are beyond the scope of this simple answer.
I hope this simple explanation works. Good luck.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Aluminum Extrusions
Skippy – We heard a question about aluminum extrusions and (potential?) die modifications –
“I have a simple L-shape extrusion that is currently produced by a supplier. We have need for an additional L-shape extrusion with a shorter length on one of the legs. The supplier has stated that a whole new die is needed. Why wouldn’t the supplier be able to use the existing extrusion die by blocking off part of the existing die with a removable plate that covers part of the leg?” [similar to plastics extrusion – S - ]
Buzz - as far as tooling for aluminum extrusions go, the die charge (with any volume) for a new die is probably only around $1200 to $1600. You might be better off if the quantity is small working with a someone to trim off a small amount of aluminum and sell the scrap to recover the cost -
Example -
Normal extrusion costs $.80 per foot
Corrected extrusion costs $.68 per foot
Retail value of aluminum difference $.12 per foot
Recovery cost of scrap aluminum est. max 50% or $.06 per foot
Cost to machine off aluminum portion not needed est. $.10 per foot
$.80 extrusion + $.10 fabrication cost -$.06 aluminum recovery = $.84
versus
$.68 and a die charge of guesstimate - $1600
Difference is $.16 per foot - so until you buy 10000 feet ($1600 divided by $.16 per foot savings) it is cheaper to work with someone to fabricate what you need.
Note - The guesstimate for the foot cost on the current extrusion might be somewhat smaller if you go up in total volume - buying the portion that is normal PLUS the portion that you will have fabricated -
Substitute in your own numbers and see what looks best -
Good luck.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
UPdate to saw blades discussion
Here is a site worth looking at for Acrylic sawing tips - although the generalizations lend themselves more to your own trial and error -
http://www.plasticsmag.com/features.asp?fIssue=Jan/Feb-04&aid=3920
For some tool speed suggestions on more exotic plastic materials - look here -
http://www.boedeker.com/fabtip.htm
And as the good old standby for good plastic blade general info including blade component terminology I use
http://www.generalsaw.com/resource/plasticblade.html
Once again, the key to machining plastics in general is to have a tooth chip design which lends itself to cutting or slicing depending on material, holding the material firmly to prevent chatter, adequate tool speed to remove material but slow enough to discourage heat generation (gumming up the works so to speak) and making sure to deal with chip and dust evacuation issues - always including using your protective equipment - eye, ear and nose/mouth protection.
- Skippy -
http://www.plasticsmag.com/features.asp?fIssue=Jan/Feb-04&aid=3920
For some tool speed suggestions on more exotic plastic materials - look here -
http://www.boedeker.com/fabtip.htm
And as the good old standby for good plastic blade general info including blade component terminology I use
http://www.generalsaw.com/resource/plasticblade.html
Once again, the key to machining plastics in general is to have a tooth chip design which lends itself to cutting or slicing depending on material, holding the material firmly to prevent chatter, adequate tool speed to remove material but slow enough to discourage heat generation (gumming up the works so to speak) and making sure to deal with chip and dust evacuation issues - always including using your protective equipment - eye, ear and nose/mouth protection.
- Skippy -
Sunday, April 20, 2008
'Smart Boards' - 80% of the capability at a fraction of the cost
Skippy: If you're like most of us, you have computers, and you may have one of those low cost projectors to show your PowerPoint presentations at your board meetings. Most of us would also love to have one of those several thousand dollar 'Smart Boards' for the conference room or to use on the road with business presentations and brain storming - but the cost . . .
Buzz: well, yes; and?
Skippy: It never fails to amaze me that 'connective thinking opportunities' occure all the time. I was at a school board meeting the other night as an involved parent and was watching a technology coordinator and some teachers delivering an update on integrating computer technology into standard subjects like readin' writin' and 'rithmetic etc. As I watched the demonstration that evening using an inexpensive projector - I thought of this project I saw on the web in the last few days that had to do about gaming technology but hadn't really done anything with yet. I felt I just had to share this with as many business partners as I could this week - Don't you wish we could be as cool as young people like this young man? see:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/245
His Wii remote hacks and additional programming are here:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/
Buzz: after watching these, I can't help thinking that this would be a good low cost project for one or more high school kids in computer or science class, and the outcome would be a presentation showing "80% of the capability of these white boards (at $2.0-$.30 thousand each for large ones) at a small percentage of the cost" as the author demonstrates. If nothing more, it along with some 'zippy presentation' might spur the school board into further alignment with the technology.
Skippy: Right you are, AND this is one of those times where you just have to wonder to yourself, couldn't this be applied in my business as well; I need to get my 'computer and wrench staff' working together to try this out -
Enjoy
Buzz: well, yes; and?
Skippy: It never fails to amaze me that 'connective thinking opportunities' occure all the time. I was at a school board meeting the other night as an involved parent and was watching a technology coordinator and some teachers delivering an update on integrating computer technology into standard subjects like readin' writin' and 'rithmetic etc. As I watched the demonstration that evening using an inexpensive projector - I thought of this project I saw on the web in the last few days that had to do about gaming technology but hadn't really done anything with yet. I felt I just had to share this with as many business partners as I could this week - Don't you wish we could be as cool as young people like this young man? see:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/245
His Wii remote hacks and additional programming are here:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/
Buzz: after watching these, I can't help thinking that this would be a good low cost project for one or more high school kids in computer or science class, and the outcome would be a presentation showing "80% of the capability of these white boards (at $2.0-$.30 thousand each for large ones) at a small percentage of the cost" as the author demonstrates. If nothing more, it along with some 'zippy presentation' might spur the school board into further alignment with the technology.
Skippy: Right you are, AND this is one of those times where you just have to wonder to yourself, couldn't this be applied in my business as well; I need to get my 'computer and wrench staff' working together to try this out -
Enjoy
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