CNC: A Technical Partnership
What Happens when Technical Resources and Leadership Team-up?
In manufacturing plants and machine shops across the globe, manufacturing leadership and plant technical resources need to team-up. It’s more than a nice recommendation - it’s a requirement for business success.
Brett Clutter, owner of G3CNC, agrees with me. Brett and his team at G3CNC provide training programs for all levels of CNC machining. Prior to the launch of his business, I worked with Brett at a CNC machining business that produces precision parts for the aerospace and defense industries. Brett and I started working for this business at about the same time and the business was a complete mess when we started. Literally every customer order was late to ship, and each job suffered some level of quality issue. Shop floor leadership was weak, the planning systems were broken, the CNC programs were poorly designed, the tooling selection and organization was a disaster, the quality system didn’t work, the operator and machinist skills were poor, and employee morale was in the dumps. Talk about a challenge!
So how did Brett and I fix this business? Through teamwork! You see Brett was the CNC technical expert and I was the business leader. We started meeting daily to discuss the issues and we structured sustainable solutions to systemically correct each issue. Brett focused on developing a tooling plan, technical training structure and more stable CNC program designs for close to 10,000 existing part programs. Meanwhile I focused on creating a more robust quality system, building a more proactive planning system, and implementing lean principles such as 5S and cell design. Once we demonstrated success to the Board of Directors, they invested in us by providing funding for more advanced technology such as Keyence vision systems for inspections, an automated parts cleaning system and new more efficient CNC machines including a 12 axis Swiss Style lathe .
If Brett didn’t do his part on the technical-side or I didn’t do my part on the leadership-side of things, then the business would have continued to flounder. You see it takes both strong leadership and strong technical resources to run a manufacturing business. Usually, it is best not to combine technical responsibility and leadership responsibility into one role. Keeping these roles separate allows for more disciplined focus in each area. Then it is a matter of teamwork. The better the teamwork, the better the results.
Since our time working together, Brett and I both realized that shop floor technical skills and shop floor leadership skills are really lacking in our CNC shops and factories throughout the United States, and we now provide training solutions to solve these business dilemmas.
Brett founded G3CNC as a CNC training solution, leveraging his CNC expertise to develop the knowledge and skills of CNC machinists and programmers throughout the US. While Joe founded Tools for the Trenches manufacturing supervisor training to provide skills and knowledge to our frontline manufacturing leaders. While we have no business affiliation, our separate businesses support a strong bridge between the technical-side and the leadership-side of manufacturing. Plant success can only be achieved when both the technical resources and the leadership team work together in tandem and support good shop practices.
To learn more about G3CNC please visit https://www.g3cnc.net
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