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A Brief History Of Quality By Jesse Brasseur   Resources were limited in Japan in the 1940s due to World War II.  During that time Japanese motor companies Mitsubishi, who built the zero planes for the Japanese army, and Toyota, who built the vehicles for the Japanese army, came together to form the original Quality […]

How To Run This Business My dad and I had a close, but often contentious relationship. He had a much different idea on how to run a business than I did. Part of this was the result of his life experience, experience that made him much more “hands-on” than I was. Back in the early […]

Maintenance Team Metrics As part of the Maintenance team’s efforts to improve, they have included the following metrics on their team scoreboards: Completing repair requests within three days, Completing planned repair requests on a monthly basis, and tracking repair and maintenance spending monthly. These metrics help keep production running and help profitability of the company […]

New Equipment at Fastco This year, Fastco has added / is adding three new (to us machines). Here’s a breakdown of each machine. New Cold Heading Equipment: Nakashimada NP-121 In the spring, we onboarded a Nakashimada NP-121. We were able to find this gem with the help of FH Machinery out of Pennsylvania (Thanks John!).  […]

Distribution and Customer Service Team Scoreboards The Distribution and Customer Service teams chose three major areas to focus on for our scoreboard. These include: Percentage of on time shipments for orders with stock on hand, Number of errors made by Customer Service, and Time it takes to process finished goods into inventory. On-Time Shipments We […]

Safety Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (SFMEA) Over the last year and a half, Fastco’s safety team has been developing a Safety Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (SFMEA). We identify safety and health risks using a failure modes and effects analysis. We adopted this from the quality methodology used in the automotive industry to reduce […]