Managing Family Time While Running a Machine Shop During COVID-19

In our new world where many of us in manufacturing are considered essential and critical, how are you and your family making it work? Are your kids going back to school? What does that look like? Are they wearing masks, are they social distancing? If you have young children as I do, I think we can agree that very few understand social distancing. As my wife gets her classroom ready for 20 kindergartners (she’s doing God’s work), I can’t help but wonder what safety protocols will be instituted with such young children.

There are a ton of articles about work-life balance and how important it is to find this middle ground. With that, what does work/life balance look like during COVID-19 with so many people working from home with kids of all ages? My team and I are still at the shop every day but I know many friends and colleagues that are at home who may be experiencing a less than balanced life right now when work and family time collide in the same dwelling. In a world where we are supposed to be on and available all the time- how do we consistently try and separate the two?

To help combat some of these issues, my family and I have made it a point that our evenings will be spent together with little to no shop talk. My two daughters greet me at the door every evening with cheers and squealing, it’s my favorite time of day. The challenge for me is to be done with work at that point in time and focus on those two immediately and fully. They have so much to share about their day, what game they’re playing, or what new toy they got. I find it is extremely important to fully absorb into their world for some time and just be with them without any distractions. Quality over quantity is my motto for weekend time. As a business owner, the work will always be there, and being available sometimes means 24/7- especially over the last few weeks while we’ve been installing our new Doosan NHP 4000. With that said, I’ve found that I can make some great connections with my family if I put my phone away for an hour or so and have some clear and honest expectations that I have to be available at times I may not want to be.

With COVID still impacting our lives, we’d love to hear from our friends and customers on how you continue to deal with what we all probably thought would be over by now. Be well and stay healthy.

Justin Quinn, President

Machinery Investment & the importance of technology

It’s Christmas day here at Focused on Machining! Yes, I know, it is only July but we’ve just set up our newest machine- the Doosan LPS II Series with a brand new NHP4000 horizontal. Our team is eager and fired up to see what new capabilities we will be able to offer our current clients and new customers too! If you are like our organization, this is what we thrive on- taking on new projects, expanding our machining capabilities, and figuring out how we can further help our partners with whatever manufactured parts they need made.

This machine has many favorable capabilities- the pallet size of 400mm, it can run lights out manufacturing, it’s extremely user friendly and registers basic information for flexible machining & manufacturing, it allows up to 800mm in material diameter, and can typically be installed in one day. It is also space saving with a compact design. The new machine will help our customers by being able to more efficiently setup custom jobs and make prototype manufactured parts. This new machine and expanded hours of operation will allow us to reduce turn time for customers that need parts now, with the goal of turning orders in days or a couple weeks. FOM will also be better able to support small batch production runs that include many different part numbers. We can run these parts all simultaneously which will complete an entire order all at once vs. making one part number at a time.

When I took this business over in 2016, I was adamant that we kept up on the latest machine technology and tooling. This industry continues to evolve and premier technology from just yesterday, could be obsolete today. Let us help you with your next project- we can quote your custom job today!

Justin Quinn, President

Machine moving day at Focused on Machining!

New machine day at Focused on Machining!

American Made Manufacturing & The Effort to Re-shore

Pride of ownership means something to me. As many of you may already know, I served in the Air Force as a Flying Crew Chief from 2002-2008. I traveled across the globe but primarily in Europe and the Middle East and maintained and repaired the C-17 aircraft for missions that flew all over the world. In my service to our country, I met many amazing people and learned about culture firsthand. It is an experience that changed me and enhanced my appreciation for our country, our capacity, and what American made stands for.

Here at Focused on Machining, our CNC machining services are being used in defense, transportation, food and beverage, and aerospace industries. Every day we are building our custom machining capacity, utilizing the latest CNC technology, and ensuring that quality is NEVER compromised and I can tell you from experience, that is not the case in other parts of the world. Reshoring much of our supply chain & manufacturing capabilities to the states makes sense for several reasons. Given our current situation with COVID-19, having outsourced suppliers that are not in proximity means parts may not be made on time because of delays in getting materials and shipping completed parts. Manufacturing in America also secures steady, well-paid careers in local machine shops that are in extremely high demand. Ask one machine shop in the Denver area and I guarantee they are all looking to add skilled labor on their shop floor! Data collected by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) & National Tooling and Machining Association (NTMA) points out that people with a CNC certificate typically make more money than an entry-level college graduate- and you don’t have thousands of dollars in loans to pay back. For every dollar spent in manufacturing, $2.74 is spent in our US economy (National Association of Manufacturers).

We are open, we have the manufacturing capacity, and the quality of our parts made here will never be compromised. Let us custom quote your next manufacturing job today!

Justin Quinn, President

The Value of Joining the NTMA

When I bought Focused on Machining in 2016 I knew it would be imperative to immerse myself and my business in all things machining, manufacturing, and tooling. I was fortunate to find the NTMA, which stands for National Tooling & Machining Association. The local chapter that I'm very involved in is the Rocky Mountain Tooling & Machining Association (RMTMA).

Since I came from a finance background, and as a new owner who was about to embark on manufacturing, it was important that I surrounded myself with a network that I could lean on for questions, advice, and resources.  The local chapter has been a sounding board for me- between our regular members who have decades of experience in aerospace, medical device, and transportation manufacturing to the trusted industry partners who specialize in insurance, materials, banking, and business coaching. I’ve been able to take this business to heights that I didn’t think would be achievable in such a short matter of time.  

How have the program and services helped me directly?

Education and Training for my employees

NTMA has an apprentice program through NTMA-U’s course work that will teach new apprentice machinists the basics of GD&T, math, blueprint reading, CNC simulation, and Quality control. This program aligns with many of the state’s certified apprenticeship programs. NTMA members get significant discounts and support when accessing these vital materials. Besides from the actual shop topics that my employees and I enjoy, the RMTMA has held webinars on best practices for hiring during COVID, Improving the performance of a machine shop, Finance for non-financial Managers, Costing is a science, Pricing is an Art, online quoting systems and so much more. What I learn from these sessions and implement in business has helped dramatically.

Benchmarking reports- data, statistics, and finance you won’t get anywhere else.

If you’re like me, you know that numbers can provide valuable data on where you were, where you are, and where you’re going. The NTMA conducts two surveys a year and provides valuable benchmarking reports so that members can measure where they are against their competition. Operating costs & executive Compensation surveys cover what it costs to do business and executive compensation. The second is a Wage and fringe benefits report. These surveys go out to members where their confidential responses are built into a dashboard where participating members can see their data compared to other businesses by size, location, or subsector of the industry. These powerful tools pay for themselves. Data like this from Deloitte or PWC costs thousands. This benefit is included with your NTMA membership.

Insurance benefits & program discounts

NTMA has relationships with industry-specific insurance providers that help members with discounts on liability, general, and workman’s comp insurance. The NTMA also has insurance discounts for company-provided health insurance plans through United Healthcare. NTMA also provides some rebate and discount programs through companies like Grainger, Staples, Office Depot, Airgas, Sherman Williams, Unifirst, and Priceline.com. Discounts like these directly impact my bottom line- I’m saving money on everyday supplies.

Networking, Business Referrals, and Shop Tours

My favorite benefit of being an NTMA member is the endless opportunities for manufacturing business owners to connect and refer business to each other. The advice, guidance, suggestions, and many business referrals I’ve received from my peers in the NTMA is why I’m here. When OSHA stops by my shop unexpectedly or a machine breaks down that needs to be fixed immediately, I know I can reach out to my peer network in NTMA and get solutions. With the 30+ companies that are represented here in the Colorado area, I know someone has dealt with this issue before. In fact, many of our members are 3rd or 4th generation machine shop owners! Where else will you have contacts that truly understand the same issues you have? You will find this with NTMA.

As you can probably tell, the NTMA has been an invaluable resource for my business. If you own a shop, I encourage you to join. Please feel free to reach out to me If you have any other questions. For direct resources on the NTMA, go here - https://ntma.org/membership/

Justin Quinn, President

Navigating COVID-19 as a Machine Shop

During this COVID-19 health crisis, there has been a wave of emotions, thoughts, plans, and actions that many businesses have taken throughout the country. This month’s blog is all about what Focused on Machining (FOM) is doing to ensure our people are safe, customers are taken care of, the business is taken care of, and the overall manufacturing community is taken care of.

In early March when all of this kicked off, we posted good hygiene practices on our bulletin board for employees to read, but we quickly realized that wasn’t going to be enough. States started shutting down, social distancing measures went into place, and non-essential businesses were closing. This is when we got anxious and started really taking it seriously with employees.  It was clear that the success of the business through this time was going to be determined by the health of the employees and our ability to continue business operations.

Immediately, we had meetings with employees instructing them to practice social distancing at the shop, we provided disinfectant wipes to the staff, we wiped down the shop, cleaning high touch areas with Clorox spray multiple times per week. We suspended any outside traffic into the shop.

We started making some process changes in our shop like rearranging our shipping and receiving department for UPS and FedEx to drop packages inside a door and keep them from coming into the shop. We did everything we could to make sure our work area was clean, and to stress the importance to our staff to stay healthy, practice social distancing and to refrain from going out on non-essential tasks. We purchased rubber gloves and other sanitation supplies to have on hand. We went as far as making our own washable masks for the staff over a weekend to provide them with anything they could use to continue to be healthy.

We also reached out to customers to let them know we were here for them and we were going to stay open and keep their supply chains open. We made it clear that if any portion of their supply chain was impacted, we would do everything we could to help them through it. We had frequent calls with our customers to determine if our base was going to be impacted so we could plan on possible workflow disruptions in the shop.

There was a lot of information coming out from the government on multiple relief and stimulus packages available to small businesses. We did as much research as we possibly could on these matters. We attended webinars, we read documents, we made phone calls to banks and accountants to make sure we understood the tools that were there to help us through this time.

Lastly, we checked in with our local community to engage and see how everyone else was doing. We provided advice in areas where we knew more than other shop owners. We asked questions of those who knew more than we did. We provided support to local communities for healthcare supplies, we offered our manufacturing and 3D printing services to help with critical supplies. Much of this was facilitated by the Rocky Mountain Tooling & Machining Association (RMTMA) which is a local chapter of the National Tooling and Machining Association (NTMA). RMTMA was great about providing resources and webinars for shops to learn and lean on each other for advice and assistance.

We will continue to do all these things for as long as the pandemic lasts. Our goal is to always ensure our workforce has the tools and equipment they need to be healthy at the shop and at home. And we will continue to reach out to our community through RMTMA to learn from other shop owners, to teach where we can, and to be a contributing member to the Manufacturing community so we can all survive this and come out the other side stronger.

Justin Quinn, President

Focused on Machining: Our Brand Promise

As Focused on Machining continues to scale, it’s important for us as a company to grow in how we serve our customers. We recently have committed to working diligently on defining who we are as a company and who we want to become, all in the quest to better serve our customers. We believe there are differentiators in the level of service that can be found in today’s machine shops, and we strive to serve those that need parts quicker than most other shops can deliver.  Our brand promise is High Quality Parts, When YOU Need Them. We spent considerable time researching gaps in today’s custom CNC part market. What we found was that there are still many shops across the country that are not set up to machine parts at quick-turn speeds. In response to identifying those gaps we have looked at our business and made improvements in how we can speed up our manufacturing and quoting processes. We’ve recently invested in a new digital quoting platform that enables us to quote rapidly, and give options in regards to lead time with dynamic pricing. If parts are needed in 10 days, we can facilitate that and show the price of what that would be compared to 12, 15 or 18 days. Our goal at Focused on Machining is the deliver parts Where Quality and Delivery Meet in the Customer’s Favor. In order to deliver on our brand promise for our customers we’ve identified a few key factors that ensure we can deliver High Quality Parts When YOU Need Them, they are:

• Parts that generally can fit in your hands

• Parts that require equal to or greater than +/- .003

• Parts that are in quantities of 25 or less

Our mission at FOM is to support companies with American integrity that flows into world-class service for our customers.

Justin Quinn, President