I'm Andrew Kossowski, and I'm the owner of Veterans Metal, and I run my plant using Steelhead.
Hi, I'm Andrew Kossowski, owner of Veterans Metal in Largo, Florida. We provide anodizing, chemical film, and stainless steel passivation services for our customers throughout the United States, and we're happy to do so. Most of what we do is for the military, but we also do a lot of work for automotive, marine, and recreational services as well.
As part of our transformation project, we came from an old 27-year-old manual job shop. Everything was paper-based, with Excel spreadsheets. We really had no ability to track efficiency, performance, or quality — everything was on paper. So, we did an RFP back in 2020 and started hunting for software that could help us combine quoting systems, scheduling, invoice tracking, and the ability to know where the parts are at all times through a QR code. I wanted to go 100% paperless, and it wasn't easy.
We were finding all kinds of software for manufacturers who actually make the parts, but we really couldn't find anybody that actually did anodizing or chemical film, the kind of metal finishing that we do. Then, we came across Steelhead by chance at a conference at IMTS, and Steelhead said, "Well, we'd like to show you what we do. We do it specifically for this industry." And then suddenly, I thought, "Wow, this is exactly what I was looking for."
They came on board, and the best part of Steelhead was the project management aspect. They really interfaced on a regular basis. I love the fact that we did soft launches, implementing one milestone at a time, all the way to fruition. Now, we're the state-of-the-art shop in Florida for sure, and especially in the local area.