Cnc consultant needed

I have a CNC Machine shop with about 25 CNC machines. a little lathe heavy; do a lot of oil and natural gas work.

Have good people, but I cannot seem to get this place to turn a profit. Efficiency is my problem, but I am not a machinist myself.. So i find myself at the mercy of having to believe whatever my employees tell me.

I am in need of someone to come watch my shop operate for a few days and tell me where my leaks are.

Anyone have any suggestions? located in Oklahoma.

Thanks

TM1710 said:

I have a CNC Machine shop with about 25 CNC machines. a little lathe heavy; do a lot of oil and natural gas work.

Have good people, but I cannot seem to get this place to turn a profit. Efficiency is my problem, but I am not a machinist myself.. So i find myself at the mercy of having to believe whatever my employees tell me.

I am in need of someone to come watch my shop operate for a few days and tell me where my leaks are.

Anyone have any suggestions? located in Oklahoma.

Thanks

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many will suggest tracking actual times to complete jobs and recording delays and working on whats is the cause of delays, sometimes trying to save 10 minutes is causing 100's of minutes in delays intermittently, consistent reliability often is more important than breaking speed records. . same with tracking tooling costs. sometimes a relatively small change can change tooling costs considerably
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SMED single minute exchange of dies many books on it is a technique used to reduce setup times. many books on it. kaisan is a concept where you get everybody at a meeting and talk about improvement ideals. often bosses are whats holding things back and allowing changes often helps.
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literally there are many books on improving things. also there are "experts" that you can hire to teach things
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some places have a daily standing (nobody wants to stand for long) meeting at beginning of shift to talk about problems the previous day. and big boss will often decide what to do especially when many little bosses disagree on what to do (or different departments disagree on what to do). and day after big boss will want to hear status on problem fix. things get done not forgotten that way

TM1710 said:

Anyone have any suggestions? located in Oklahoma.

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Find a (profitable) shop comparable in size to yours, talk to the owner or foreman, and ask them to be your consultant for a fee maybe on a weekend where it doesn't conflict with their day job?

many consultants out there will teach the "Toyoda Way" or kaisan or 5S or SMED
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if they teach a course and students pass a test than you can say the training job is done. when its open ended how can a consultant say he is done or consultant you hire how can you say he or she is done ?
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you have to define what are your expectations ? and many a consultant has made formal recommendations and a year later few if any were implemented. like employee suggestions often they are not done cause boss has to give the ok.
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same with employee training. boss has to setup training times. if no time setup for training than training is not done.
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often nothing changes cause often the changes require time and money and commitment to follow through the changes.

Mtndew said:

Find a (profitable) shop comparable in size to yours, talk to the owner or foreman, and ask them to be your consultant for a fee maybe on a weekend where it doesn't conflict with their day job?

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While he copies all your drawings, and calls up your customers and undercuts you on the weekday ?

NDA non disclosure agreement. fairly standard legal document with who ever you work with

digger doug said:

While he copies all your drawings, and calls up your customers and undercuts you on the weekday ?

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lol that's entirely possible.

But there are some good people left in this world.

How did you get into this predicament?

Family business you inherited?
A business you purchased?
Or is this a business you built that got away from you?

That answer defines your best move forward. If it the third option, this could be a relatively painless fix, if it is the first two, you are in for a long learning curve that probably involves you hiring someone to run the place while you learn.

digger doug said:

While he copies all your drawings, and calls up your customers and undercuts you on the weekday ?

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Is this a real thing? Or better yet, are people actually afraid of this?? *

I get china knocking off items, but the guy down the street, or a town over...?
I used to work at a place where the plant manager would cut out the title block of all the prints... Like I was going to call SXT enterprises and pitch my home shop to make their stuff (I don't have a home shop btw)

*Although I do remember one shop I worked at the sales guy deleted his contacts from his pc and took all the business cards he had collected over the years when he left.

It will honestly take more than a couple days to pin point all your problems even though it will boil down to a little bit of everything or one of the following. The person bidding the jobs is underestimating the time and costs. The workforce is inefficient, either through lack of skill, laziness, or not maximizing cycle times. And last but not least the workers are not provided with the best tools and equipment to do their job.

Dualkit said:

It will honestly take more than a couple days to pin point all your problems even though it will boil down to a little bit of everything or one of the following. The person bidding the jobs is underestimating the time and costs. The workforce is inefficient, either through lack of skill, laziness, or not maximizing cycle times. And last but not least the workers are not provided with the best tools and equipment to do their job.

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BUT... (not really trying to sound like an ass but have been around the block)....

I should give the OP the benefit of the doubt, at least he is asking, and not immediately assuming he has a bunch of lazy bastids working for him/her....
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1) The person bidding the jobs is underestimating the time and costs. Nope, they know they are *right* because the shop down the street bid/did that job for $xx.

2) The workforce is inefficient, either through lack of skill, laziness, or not maximizing cycle times. Surely can't be the operator/machinist faults!

3) Workers are not provided with the best tools and equipment to do their job. This could be a very contributing factor, but sorting out #2 and #3 will result in alot of butt hurt feelings and likely not lead anywhere...

Mike1974 said:

1) The person bidding the jobs is underestimating the time and costs. Nope, they know they are *right* because the shop down the street bid/did that job for $xx.

2) The workforce is inefficient, either through lack of skill, laziness, or not maximizing cycle times. Surely can't be the operator/machinist faults!

3) Workers are not provided with the best tools and equipment to do their job. This could be a very contributing factor, but sorting out #2 and #3 will result in alot of butt hurt feelings and likely not lead anywhere...

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2 and 3 can go hand in hand when you get operators using insert after insert and not bothering to try to figure out why. Or their "fix" is to play disk jockey with the over rides and never to fix the program/bring it up to programming.

What's the mix? If it's mostly repeat jobs, you can focus on optimizing the jobs that you spend the most time on (setup times, cycle times, tooling efficiency, reducing scrap). If it's mostly one-offs and new short runs, you need to develop an efficient process for developing efficient processes.

TM1710 said:

I have a CNC Machine shop with about 25 CNC machines. a little lathe heavy; do a lot of oil and natural gas work.

Have good people, but I cannot seem to get this place to turn a profit. Efficiency is my problem, but I am not a machinist myself.. So i find myself at the mercy of having to believe whatever my employees tell me.

I am in need of someone to come watch my shop operate for a few days and tell me where my leaks are.

Anyone have any suggestions? located in Oklahoma.

Thanks

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I really commend your bravery and honesty for making this post. Awesome question / query.


Another angle to explore might be to call in a forensic account (or similar) to really go through your books.

I have to be honest it's not unheard of to have someone with their "Hand in the till" / (on the fiddle.) over a period of years (in some cases).

The "Problem" may not be "machining / pricing " related.

I hope you figure things out.

cameraman said:

I have to be honest it's not unheard of to have someone with their "Hand in the till" / (on the fiddle.) over a period of years (in some cases).

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I was in a shop a couple times over the last few weeks that had this issue. Family owned business, former GM was sending work out to a shop that he owned. My guess is there were at least a few people who were in on it, but regardless the family stepped in and cleaned house, and either has or is looking to replace most of their salaried staff.

I'll be honest, coming from the corporate world, I almost couldn't believe it. But people always find ways to surprised me.

More than half my career if you want to call it that as a machinist has been self employed. I never liked working for the man, but when I did I treated my work place like I owned it, considering it a learning lab on someone else's dime. I job hopped a lot, that was the best way to learn and maximize pay. The number one thing I saw as a problem was slow cycle times on repeat jobs. No one ever seemed to push the limits to find the balance to maximize yield. I have even found that when bidding jobs on internet forums. I wasn't named but when the person posted the RFQ gave out the price I had bid I was accused of leading the race to the bottom and being a 40 year old man living in his mother's basement. I had the right machine and skills for the part, a lot of guys estimated the cycle time as 3 minutes, I ran them in 45 seconds and never changed a tool after set-up.

TM1710 said:

I have a CNC Machine shop with about 25 CNC machines. a little lathe heavy; do a lot of oil and natural gas work.

Have good people, but I cannot seem to get this place to turn a profit. Efficiency is my problem, but I am not a machinist myself.. So i find myself at the mercy of having to believe whatever my employees tell me.

I am in need of someone to come watch my shop operate for a few days and tell me where my leaks are.

Anyone have any suggestions? located in Oklahoma.

Thanks

Click to expand...

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Mike1974 said:

Is this a real thing? Or better yet, are people actually afraid of this?? *

I get china knocking off items, but the guy down the street, or a town over...?
I used to work at a place where the plant manager would cut out the title block of all the prints... Like I was going to call SXT enterprises and pitch my home shop to make their stuff (I don't have a home shop btw)

*Although I do remember one shop I worked at the sales guy deleted his contacts from his pc and took all the business cards he had collected over the years when he left.

Click to expand...

We once had the shop owner's from across town digging through our dumpster at night trying to figure out our pricing and customers. The police wouldn't do anything, but it turns out the digital pictures were embarrassing enough to keep them out of our dumpster for a couple of years

I am last to say culture of lazy, but it sounds like that to some degree. It does not take much for it to happen; positive let us say it is not culture of lazy...
20 machines of any type and some pride and ingenuity from workers can make anything. That is a lot of machines, you should be spitting out metal as fast a trucks can drive. Ergonomics. Ergonomics, Ergonomics, not just for strain anymore. Go to a notoriously slow service deli, supply house, coffee shop or corner store near by, spend time looking at the process, be nice and let the nice lady go in front of you level of observation. Now, go to a starbucks or subway and watch the exact same product (debate quality all you want, the making is identical) being made. it is less process than work station ergonomics. Each barista at starbucks has their own cold bar layout modified from identifiably written layout for their arm length and local drinks- yet is recognizable to any starbuck barista. There is some toyata practice so you can quantitate this process, but basically change one or two things at a few machines each day, within a week it should be down to direction of pencil laydown. then a month later an op will come up with idea for the next thing frustrating their output.
Remove stools (biggest peeve of mine with operators who are not keeping up with machine capabilities) or any obstacle for operator to do work at repetition speed, even for onesee twosees and you will see a dramatic level of output per machine.

I imagine it would be hard to find shop to help you learn to be a better competitor. rising tide lifts all boats, but a limit on how close I want you fishing next to me. I do not think most would steal ideas from you, just the concept is backwards.

Just for fun, take an evening and read "The Goal - Excellence in Manufacturing"
I read it long ago, and I know a few others on this forum have read it also. It's not a "how-to book" but I learned a fair bit from it. It might give you an idea about some sort of different approach. A good friend of mine used the principles in his job, which has nothing to do with manufacturing as we think of on this forum......
Good luck!