Cold Heading Metrics

At Fastco, our Quality Policy is “Striving to Meet Customer Expectations Through Continuous Innovation.” This may sound like vapid wordiness or mumbo jumbo, but the truth is that continuous innovation takes work. Behind that work, we need concrete data to prove out what we are doing right and how we can improve. That is where metrics come in. This week, we are talking about Cold Heading Metrics.

In all departments, metrics are one way that we can measure our progress. The Cold Heading Department’s metrics include the following:

Production Output

This is a measure of our output, or how many pieces we make per month. This impacts our absorbed costs. The more pieces we make, the more favorable the absorption will be.

 

Downtime

When a machine is down, we aren’t making money. With this metric, we are measuring downtime as a percentage of the total hours for each job. We chose to only record the forms of downtime that we have the most control over which include: Unavailable Setup/Operator, Troubleshooting, and Weld/String Wire. This metric would impact the absorption and profitability because, in theory, the less downtime we have, the more parts we can run.

 

Setup + Run Times vs Standard

We have standards established that tell us how long it should take to set up a machine, and how long it should take to run a job. This metric compares our actual times to the standard times as a percentage with 100% meaning the actual times and standard times are equal, and anything under 100% means we set up and ran the job out quicker than our standards, meaning we saved labor dollars on the setup. This metric would also impact the department’s absorbed costs. If we take longer to run a job out, then we are using more resources making each part more expensive, hurting our absorption number and our overall profitability.

 

Scrap

This is the dollar value of all the setup scrap we make per month. Keeping track of this will make us more aware of how much money we throw away every month in scrap, this is money taken directly from our bottom line. This metric impacts the scrap number for the company.

by Sean Higley, Cold Heading Team Leader

 

Purchasing Update 2024

It’s time for a Purchasing Update from the team that works seamlessly with Fastco’s tool rooms and other departments to handle inventory and purchasing.

In Purchasing, one of our recent points of focus has been tooling inventory accuracy and management.  On the inventory control side, we have been working tirelessly to ensure the Plex Toolset BOM’s are accurate and fully loaded, giving us greater visibility on cost, inventory value, and projected tooling needs. Optimizing our storage solutions for tooling has freed up space in the shuttles for new work.

Meanwhile, our purchasing assistant has sorted and labeled obsolete tooling provides a significant savings on tooling material as we’re able to repurpose this old tooling for current jobs.

Purchasing Update on Department Goals

Our number one goal this year is Point of Use Storage for tooling.  It’s been on our list for quite a while. This year is the year we can get it done.

Open-Book Management and Purchasing

The open-book style of management has generated some great discussions and questions from our team.  We’ve incorporated some of these into our processes. We are working on implementing additional ideas that will ultimately improve profitability in the future.

The inventory control team had already been communicating potential (or actual) stock outs to the Tool Room and Purchasing functions. The addition of our scoreboard drivers will generate long-term solutions to some of the common issues we’ve been seeing. With the improved transparency, score boarding, and utilizing the Great Game of Business framework to conduct business, I am incredibly excited to see what cross-functional collaboration we achieve. In addition, I am eager to see how much better Fastco will be performing in the coming years!

by Aaron Headrick, Purchasing Manager

Administration Spotlight

2023 was a challenging year for the Administration department, however the team stepped up and worked together to keep things running smoothly. Fastco’s controller position was in a state of flux for most of the year, but since the end of 2023, the entire team has been going strong and working together to keep things running as well as implement changes in the Finance and HR departments to help Fastco improve and remain compliant.

With the addition to our department of a full-time administrative assistant, we plan to utilize our time better.  Job duties will be redistributed within the team.  There will be more time to focus on preparing for instead of reacting to situations that come our way. We are working towards improving our process so that we are consistent and have a more proactive approach to problems.

Open-Book Management & Administration

One of our department’s tasks is to promote open-book management by bringing financial literacy and updates to the company. Open-book management can show employees how their efforts impact the bigger picture. With open-book management employees can see how their efforts impact Fastco’s finances, which usually inspires greater investment in their work. This helps employees realize the power they have to make a better financial outcome for themselves and their coworkers by working together.

In 2024, we are working with our business coach to implement company-wide huddles. This will improve engagement in open-book management as well as the financial results of the company. I am excited to see what type of impact these huddles will have on our company and employees. For our department, we are looking forward to implementing ideas and projects that will help us move towards more accurate reporting for finances and more consistency in the HR area.

by Jodie Shaver, Corporate Controller & Employee Relations Manager

Engineering Update & Achievements

The greatest achievement to come out of engineering last year was the team brainstorm of getting a new, complicated part with an internal hex drive on the end to strip off of the extrude pin. We have lots of talented individuals that were able to combine their knowledge to get the part to work, starting from the design phase, simulations, tooling trials, the mechanical arm mechanism, along with the wiring of the actual stripper mechanism.

In addition, training on the floor has been a huge success thanks to Sean Higley. The new setup people have been given a better opportunity for growth. They are better equipped to help their co-workers in the bay. It saves bay bosses from the added burden and frustration of training new people. It also ensures setup personnel receive consistent, proper training.

2024 Goals

It is difficult to pick a #1 goal for Engineering. We tend to take the mindset that each thing we work on is the #1 goal to achieve at that time.

It would be cliché to say that our #1 goal is to make sure Fastco succeeds and is as profitable as possible. That should be the overall goal for everyone.  Our #1 goal for the year could be to make sure that everyone in the department completes any ongoing training.  We also need to make sure all new equipment is properly tooled and all jobs designed. The #1 goal could also be to rapidly design for samples so they move through the facility on or before their due date. Or our #1 could be doing our part to keep production is as efficient as possible. Our #1 goal could be making sure all control plans and prints are accurate.  I’m not devaluing having a #1 goal, but our #1 goal can and does change daily.

If I had to pick one #1 goal for the year, it would be having a 0 turnover rate in 2024. I also hope that the Engineering Team continues to enjoy what they do.

by Josh Symon, Engineering Manager

2023 Sales Update

In 2023, the Sales team won substantial new business awards, representing about 10% of our net sales. While this fell short of our robust new business award goal, it still puts us on solid footing for achieving our long-term strategic goal of growing Fastco’s business by 10% year over year. This is the most important goal that the Sales team has and we continue to prioritize winning new work.

 

Sales Update for 2024

This year, we will be working hard to achieve our secondary goal of diversification. We will be prioritizing getting our outside sales managers, Milo Boyce and Andy Ike, out on the road to meet face-to-face with current customers, particularly in the non-automotive sector. In March, Milo and Nick DePompolo, our sales engineer, will be going to the NASCC Steel Conference in San Antonio. We look forward to meeting new potential customers and connecting with current customers and suppliers there.

 

More Innovations

Some really cool innovations have come from the Sales team this year, including a New Business Referral Program, which turns every team member into a sales team member. Open-book management with its open dialogue about revenue and profitability has helped bring about ideas like this. It has also helped to get our team thinking of ways to maximize profit while also staying competitive in a tough market. We’ve come up with new strategies for pricing high volume jobs that will run on under-utilized equipment. We are hoping that 2024 brings in even more new business than 2023.