Rectifiers for the Plating Industry
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Top Shops Questions: Prepare Your Data

As you get ready to take part in the Products Finishing Top Shops Benchmarking Survey for 2016, here are some of the questions you will be asked. I

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As you get ready to take part in the Products Finishing Top Shops Benchmarking Survey for 2016, here are some of the questions you will be asked. It is best to look these over and gather the information before taking the online survey so it will speed up your process.

 

FINISHING PRACTICES AND PERFORMANCE


 

1. Which of the following practices and improvement methodologies does your business use?

  • 5S workplace organization  
  • Agile manufacturing  
  • Benchmarking  
  • Cellular manufacturing  
  • ConƟnuous improvement program  
  • Customer Surveys
  • Just‐in‐time movement of material  
  • Kaizen events/blitzes  
  • Kanban and pull systems  
  • Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE)
  • Poka yoke (error prevention)  
  • Quality certs (i.e. ISO, NADCAP, etc.)
  • Six Sigma
  • Theory of constraints
  • Total productive maintenance
  • Total quality management
  • Value‐stream mapping

 

2. Please provide the following measures for your business for 2015:

  • Order lead time (receipt of order to delivery to customer in days)
  • On-time delivery rate (% of goods delivered on time)
  • Finished product first-pass quality yield (% of product that passes final inspection)
  • Scrap/rework percentage (cost of scrap and rework as a % of shop sales)
  • Scrap/rework percentage (scrapped/reworked parts as a % of total parts finished)
  • Finishing usage (average hours finishing equipment is in production per 24-hour day)

 

3. Does your shop have formal, written procedures or documented workplace rules covering each of the following areas?

  • Plating/Finishing procedures
  • Bath quality/performance
  • Preventative maintenance
  • Waste treatment equipment operation/maintenance
  • Wastewater sampling
  • Hazardous waste management
  • Hazardous material handling/spill response

 

4. Do you keep records for each of the following?

  • Bath chemistry (analytical)
  • Bath chemical additions
  • Bath temperature
  • Rectifier use
  • Preventative maintenance logs
  • Customer returns
  • City water chemistry (e.g., hardness)
  • Units of production (number of parts, pounds, square feet, etc)
  • Electricity use
  • Treatment sludge generation
  • Waste treatment chemical reagent use
  • Water use

 

5. Estimate the number of labor-hours your shop spends each week for each of the following tasks:

  • Environmental management
  • Wastewater treatment operation
  • Monitoring
  • Inspection
  • Maint. of pollution control systems
  • Analytical testing
  • Hazardous waste management
  • Reporting/recordkeeping
  • Waste reduction
  • Training
  • Local emergency planning

 

 

BUSINESS STRATEGY


 

6. Which of the following supply chain practices does your business use?

  • Access to customer forecasts
  • Certification of major suppliers
  • Collaborative design with customers
  • Collaborative design with suppliers
  • Customer satisfaction surveys
  • Just-in-time deliveries from suppliers
  • Just-in-time deliveries to customers
  • Sharing forecasts with suppliers
  • Vendor-managed or -owned inventories
  • Vendor-managed or -owned inventories for customers

 

7. Which of the following are effective sales/marketing tools for your business?

  • Blogs
  • Brochures/catalogs
  • Customer tours of your shop
  • Email promotions
  • Online – advertising
  • Online – company website
  • Print advertising (i.e. magazines)
  • Sales personnel
  • Social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn)
  • Trade shows/events
  • Trade associations
  • YouTube

 

8. For independent shops, how many active customers (paid for work) did your business have in 2015?

 

9. For independent shops, what percent of customers account for 80% of your sales in 2015?

 

10. For independent shops, what was the customer retention rate in 2015? (% of customers retained from the previous year)

 

11. What was your quote-to-book ratio? (business booked as a % of business quoted)

 

12. What were the following investments directly involved in finishing for your business in 2015?

  • Capital equipment (directly related to finishing)
  • Chemicals
  • Materials and components
  • Racking Equipment

 

13. Please provide the following financial measures for your business in 2015. By calculating these measures, it will not be necessary to provide specific values for figures such as gross sales, net income, etc. This information will be kept strictly confidential.

  • Gross sales/number of finishing lines
  • Gross sales/number of employees
  • Net income/gross sales
  • Annual sales growth rate [(gross sales 2015 - gross sales 2014) / gross sales 2014] x 100]
  • Capital equipment expenditure/gross sales

 

14. What coatings or services would you like to add to your shop?

 

PROFILE QUESTIONS


 

15. What category best describes your business’ relation to its customer base?

  • Captive shop (component of a larger company)
  • Contract shop (independent shop, mostly contracts for repeating part numbers)
  • Job shop (independent shop, mostly short-run and other non-repeating jobs)

 

16. At the end of 2015, how many years has your company been in business?

 

17. About how many total parts did your business finish in 2015?

 

18. About how many different parts did your business finish in 2015?

 

19. About how many parts does your business finish per hour?

 

20. Which of the following industries does your business primarily serve?

  • Aerospace
  • Agriculture / Construction Equipment
  • Appliances
  • Automotive
  • Building Construction
  • Electronics, computers
  • Fasteners
  • Furniture manufacturing
  • Hardware/Tools
  • Machinery/Industrial
  • Medical
  • Military/Government
  • Oil- & gas/field & mining machinery
  • Power generation (turbines, batteries.)
  • Pumps, valves & plumbing products
  • Wire Goods/Pipes

 

21. What certifications does your finishing shop currently have?

  • ISO9000
  • ISO9001
  • ISO13485
  • ISO16949
  • AS9100
  • NADCAP

 

22. What approvals does your finishing shop currently have?

  • BAE Systems
  • Bell Helicopter
  • BMW
  • Boeing
  • Caterpillar
  • Cessna Aircraft
  • Chrysler
  • Eaton Aerospace
  • Ford
  • GE
  • General Dynamics
  • GM
  • Goddard Space Flight (NASA)
  • Goodrich Aerospace
  • Honda
  • Honeywell
  • IBM
  • John Deere
  • Lockheed Martin
  • Lycoming/Textron
  • Martin Marietta
  • McDonnell Douglas
  • MD Helicopters
  • Mercury Marine
  • MOOG
  • Motorola
  • Nissan
  • Northrop Grumman
  • Pratt and Whitney
  • Raytheon
  • Rockwell-Collins
  • Rolls Royce Corp.
  • Sikorsky Aircraft
  • Toyota
  • United Technologies

 

 

FINISHING TECHNOLOGY


 

23. Which types of finishing operation accounted for at least 20% of your total processes?

  • Anodizing Hardcoat
  • Anodizing Sulfuric
  • Black Chrome
  • Blackening/Antiquing
  • Black Nickel
  • Black Oxide
  • Brass
  • Bronze
  • Bronze, White
  • Cadmium
  • Chromate
  • Chrome, Decorative
  • Chrome, Hard
  • Copper
  • Gold
  • Nickel, Chrome
  • Nickel, Decorative
  • Nickel, Electroless
  • Nickel, Industrial
  • Passivation
  • Phosphating
  • Pickling
  • Plating on Plastic
  • PVD
  • Rhodium
  • Silver
  • Tin
  • Tin-Lead
  • Tin-Nickel
  • Zinc
  • Zinc/Cobalt
  • Zinc/Iron
  • Zinc/Nickel
  • Zinc/Tin

 

24. Which additional types of finishing operations does your shop perform?

  • Abrasive Blasting
  • Brush Plating
  • Chemical Milling
  • Electrodeposition (paint)
  • Electroforming
  • Electropolishing
  • Etching
  • Lacquering
  • Mass Finishing
  • Mechanical Plating
  • Polishing or Buffing
  • Powder Coating
  • Printed Circuit Boards
  • Solid Film Lubricants
  • Spray Painting
  • Vacuum Coating

 

25. What lab analysis software does your shop use to provide support for statistical process control?

  • Scheduling and tracking of analysis events
  • Statistics and trend charts
  • Event logs and reports
  • Required corrective actions tracked
  • Solution adjustment/add slips

 

 

26. Besides lab software, which other types of computer software does your shop use?

  • Automated process lines
  • Localized PDA devices for manual process
  • Process tank sensors
  • Track product quality and defects,
  • Continuous-process improvement programs
  • Process monitoring

 

27. Which types of inspection equipment does your shop offer?

  • Abrasion Testing
  • Adhesion Testing
  • Analytical Chemistry
  • Atomic Absorption Analysis
  • Coating Weight Thickness Testing
  • Continuity Testing
  • Copper Sulfate Testing
  • Eddy Current Testing
  • Hardness Testing
  • Humidity Testing
  • Hydrogen Embrittlement
  • Plating Thickness
  • Porosity Testing
  • Quench Testing
  • Salt Spray
  • Scanning Electron Microscope
  • Solderability Testing
  • Solution Analysis
  • Stress Relief
  • Water Immersion
  • X-Ray Thickness Testing
  • XRF Reading

 

28. How many finishing lines did your shop have in production in 2015?

 

29. What was your capacity utilization percentage in 2015?

 

TRAINING AND HUMAN RESOURCES


 

30. How many people did your shop employ in 2015?

 

31. Do you plan to increase or decrease the number of employees in 2016?

  • Increase
  • Decrease
  • Stay the same

           

32. How many employees were directly involved in finishing lines at your shop in 2015?

 

33 Which human resource practices/programs does your shop use?

  • Annual review and raise program
  • Apprenticeship program
  • Bonus plan
  • Education reimbursements
  • Employee ownership options
  • Formal employee training program
  • Formal safety/health program
  • Leader/supervisor development
  • Paid medical benefits
  • Profit- or revenue-sharing plan
  • Teaming/team-building practices

 

34. What was the average wage rate for shop floor personnel in 2015? (without overtime)

 

35. On average, how many hours per year of formal training did each full-time employee receive in 2015?

  • Less than 8 hours
  • 8-20 hours
  • 21-40 hours
  • More than 40 hours
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