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 as well.
I’m looking forward to getting more frontline workers involved in company decisions. It is great to see the success that Great Game of Business can bring to our company.
Talking with the team, they often struggle with going out on repairs and talking with some of the newer employees about repair request put in for preventable issues. As much as possible and practical, the team would like to see some of the newer employees lean on some of the senior employees when struggling with a machine issue prior to getting maintenance involved.
We appreciate everything that the teams at Fastco do to support us as we work to support production.
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 felt the focus of on time shipment for in-stock orders was important to the company as a whole as it was the best way to ensure we as a team didn’t leave any possible revenue on the table in terms of shipments going out the door as quickly as possible. It has brought more attention and planning to upcoming shipments each week, and will shine a spotlight on any weak areas within our control that could inadvertently delay a shipment from going out on time.
Customer Service Errors
Customer Service felt that the best way the team could impact profitability was to track order-entry errors. In tracking errors, we hope to avoid them, therefore ensuring we do not cause extra unnecessary costs due to things like an incorrect ship date or quantity in PLEX. Entry of a wrong part number for a spot buy, which could cause parts that aren’t needed to be built and then likely not sold, etc. Almost any error in accuracy of interpretation or entry of our orders could cause costly mistakes to Fastco, directly impacting our profit.
A customer service representative at Fastco.
Efficiency in moving Finished Goods to Inventory
Lastly, our team wanted to track our current efficiency in the process of moving finished goods into inventory, starting with unloading the skids from our truck into the appropriate inventory aisles, and then the process of verifying skids, putting them into the racks and updating that inventory into PLEX. The team had some ideas for possible ways to improve the efficiency of this process overall. Therefore, we wanted to track our actions to have a baseline for our current methods. Hopefully, this will bring more awareness to how we do things to see if our ideas made sense.
Challenges Faced in Distribution and Customer Service
As a small crew at full force, absences, especially unexpected ones, can have a huge impact on our team. Luckily we have some awesome team members. They pull together to get the job done no matter our staffing situation. Our team just worked through three months of being down to just three people pulling, prepping and shipping our orders. I’m extremely proud of how they worked together to get the job done! Especially when short-handed, we need support from other teams to give us as much notice as possible for shipment needs and make sure PLEX orders are as up to date as possible. That way, we know what we need each day.
Looking Ahead
We are excited for the changes our progress into the GGOB and the weekly huddles has brought to our team and Fastco as a whole. You can feel the shift in the energy, the mindset and the awareness that these huddles have provided. We love hearing everyone’s questions. Seeing the thought, effort, and collaboration of working through these questions has been so encouraging. We can’t wait to see where we are year from now!
by Emily Bradfield, Customer Service & Distribution Team Leader
The Inspection Team developed Scoreboard drivers based on production from our Electronic floor, EZ-sort and Roller sort. As a crew, we forecast the production volume weekly on Mondays for all three areas. We create this forecast using the number of tubs that can be run from in-house inventory as well as all possible inventory that may arrive hot or is past due on the daily incoming list. This impacts on-time delivery to our customers, along with company and employee success.
Aerial view of the Inspection floor
Ongoing Initiatives for the Inspection Team
This year, we are looking forward to the ongoing growth in knowledge, training, and implementation of the Great Game of Business for the entire Sort crew. As the Team Leader, I am excited and extremely proud of each crew members’ engagement with our scoreboard and the company huddle. Their willingness to make the culture change needed for the ongoing success of our department and Fastco inspires me.
Challenges & Commitment to Improve
As the final production department in the process, the Inspection crew faces many challenges. These include insufficient timing on parts arriving into our department and a need for updated equipment to support current increased volumes and work from new business awards.
In short, our commitment is to impact positive change in not just our department but throughout Fastco. Our questions, concerns, and even complaints come from a sincere commitment to improve.
by Julie Rogers (Inspection Team Leader) and the Inspection Team
A driver represents a key activity that drives the operations and financial results of a company.
In Thread Roll, we chose three drivers this year that we really wanted to focus on: Parts Produced, Machine Efficiency, and Training Hours. We also have a year-long mini game called “Make the Boss Pay” which is aimed at tackling Cost of Poor Quality (CoPQ). We were able to win that mini game in Q1, and the team leader treated his team to a fun lunch.
Parts Produced
We track and record parts produced daily on our department scoreboard. This allows us to see where we are as far as how many parts we’ve rolled in relation to our absorbed costs forecast. And everyone knows, the more quality parts produced, the more profitable Fastco will be.
Efficiency
We track this measurable weekly in our team huddles. This allows our team to see on average how efficiently the machines are running in relation to their standard run rates in PLEX, our ERP system.
Training Hours
We track training hours weekly in our team huddles. We track the total number of hours team members are logged into machines under “Training.”
Behind the Drivers: Our Challenges
Cost of Poor Quality and Training seem to be the two biggest challenges facing Thread Roll right now. Luckily, with help from our department scoreboard and mini game, we are able to track and review these numbers regularly. I feel these challenges go hand-in-hand. Once we’ve established more training in our department, the CoPQ numbers should drop considerably.
Training Days
This leads directly into what I am most excited about for Thread Roll in 2024, which is training, training, training! The “Training Days” we’ve started have helped up and coming setup personnel to be able to focus more on setups without the need to stop what they are doing to dump production pans. We will continue to implement more of these “Training Days” when opportunities present themselves.
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.
Aerial View of the Cold Heading West Bay
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.
An aerial view of Cold Heading Bay 2
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.
A scrap bin
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.
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.
The Purchasing team, clockwise from top left: Aaron Headrick, Julie Boyce, Tracy Eno, and Ginny Beld.
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!
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.
The admin team: finance, HR, and IT
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
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.
The Engineering team at Fastco.
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.
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.
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.
Our sales engineer, Nick DePompolo, and quoting coordinator, Jake Kieffer, at a recent talk with PMA West Michigan.
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.
For this Department Spotlight, we are highlighting the Quality Department’s progress in 2023.
In 2023, the Quality Department’s greatest achievement was helping to lower the Cost of Poor Quality/Scrap by performing extra audits when needed in various areas to aid in this. While the end of the year’s COPQ was not ideal, we are still lower than 2022’s totals!
A team member inspects parts for quality assurance.
The department’s goals this year have included increasing audits and adding a layered process audit system for dimensional checks on the floor in manufacturing areas. This enables all levels of Fastco teams to review product and document it, from team members to team leaders, and managers.
A team member conducts quality checks as part of the cold heading production process.
I believe that open book management has helped most team members see where the company is financially. It has also helped team members understand our long-term stability. This has helped to raise morale, get more discussions going, and build an ownership mindset in team members.
We look forward to seeing more process improvements in 2024. We will continue to prioritize safety, quality, and production, in that order, during this year and beyond.
