welcome to webinar Wednesday on behalf of the powder coating Institute thank you for joining us for today's webinar real in compliance with automatic certification management presented by Chet Halonen and Sam Pugliese before we get started I would like to remind everyone that all attendees are on mute so if you have any questions along the way please type them in the questions panel the speaker will address the questions at the end of the webinar if we run out of time contact information will be on the
closing slide if you have additional questions this webinar will be recorded and available through the PCI store within two business days all attendees will receive a brief survey after the webinar please take a few moments to reply we appreciate your feedback as PCI continues to develop new programs to offer the topics and training you need now I'd like to introduce the presenters for today's webinar Chad is a sales engineer at Steelhead Technologies he's passionate about getting metal finishers
the actionable production data they need to maximize their profits Chet will be joined by Sam from anchor Bay powdercoat Sam is the operations manager at Anchor Bay powder coat and has been with them for nine years he'll be sharing anchor Bay's Real World experience when they implemented the automated process thank you for being here today go ahead take it away excellent thank you Kevin as mentioned I'm Chet Halonen from Steelhead Technologies I want to kick this off I want to start with why the why
behind the specs inserts and we want to look at this from a couple different perspectives so we're want to start with why from an industry perspective look at it from the oem's Viewpoint and then wrap up with you yourself as the owner a manager an operator in a powder coding Job Shop and certainly the wi's for specifications and certifications overlap across these three different segments or areas but there are unique perspectives from each of these so we'll start with the why from industry why does
the industry care why does powder coating care about specs inserts first of all it is specifications are or standards industry standards are essentially driven by the industry in terms of their expectations for powder coaters for the components that you're producing and specifications play a critical role in that as they are the framework they're the road map for these powder coders for you to meet those standards their expectations that they had set so that would be like the number one reason why
industry cares about spec specs inserts they also drive or force compliance so this is not only just the procedural processing of the parts but also from like an environmental or from a regulatory stipulation standpoint specs certainly Drive compliance in that regard they provide confidence in Powder Coating so just the highest level from a general perspective specs inserts provide your and customer your customer's customer that consumer confidence in the product in the parts that you're producing
that are being powder coated they have that conf because specs they are studied they are constantly being iterated and maintained and revised and superseded to fit the latest and greatest so let's say we have new technology or maybe we have a new powder or new chemistry specs are developed maintained and managed to ensure that the work that we're doing falls back and meets those industry standards that are being SP set that are expected from you lastly industry care is because of the health and
safety standpoint so this isn't just in the health and safety of your four walls of your plant this is also the health and safety wherever these powdercoated components end up so whatever Machinery whatever products whatever consumer is using it specs and searchs certainly Drive the health and safety aspect in that regard oams care for different reasons so OEM so the biggest one for them is the supply chain consistency so locked boing forward General Motors they have these intricate webs of Supply
chains of people that they depend on to produce parts to this high standard of work and they need to know that job shop a and Job Shop B the same The Identical part The Identical process The Identical specification those parts are coming back the same regardless of the vendor that's doing that work so that is the number one thing from an oem perspective is just insurance that the consistency within their supply base traceability would be probably the number two item closely behind the consistency
so having the ability to look back on a component that you've produced the ability to look back and see who touched it who did what data was collected what was the process flow having that information documented via certification and driven by a specification to meet that industry standard certainly the confirmation of work being completed so just the certification saying we specify we ran these parts to specification xyc so having that piece of paper that confirmation that you as The Job Shop confirm
you process to meet their specification that they desire or that they have requested for this work confidence and quality would be the last thing this kind of ties back into that supply chain consistency where your OEM the end user of that product maybe we're an automotive and we're tier two or tier three the OEM cares to have that confidence and quality throughout that entire supply chain lastly and probably the most important is why do you care about specs inserts from The Job Shop level so first
of all it all ties back to Quality and maintaining that high level of consistent and first time through quality I spent three and a half years or so at General Motors in a previous life and we had gmws an entire database of specs and this was bullet point number one just maintaining that first time through quality regardless of the role or position that you were in because they know that people switch jobs people move around they need to ensure that whoever's coming in whatever job they're doing
whatever part of the process they're involved in they have a framework for this first time through quality from a Job Shop perspective identical reasons Direction guidance en Force compliance so this is just among our staff and the processing of Parts the services that we're providing ensuring that hey our team has all of the data all the information the part is planned the part is set up in accordance to meet these standards set by our customers by the OEM certainly higher margin work is enabled
from specifications and certifications depends on the data collection if we have intensive data collection if we have to do specific tests if we have to follow certain set procedures and document that data at different points in that process we can charge for that work so certainly as a Job Shop you care about the profit you care about the money that you're making and this is another Avenue this is another source of revenue for you whether it be from charging premiums for that work or charging for
the certifications that are required to accompany that work lastly relates back to Quality again risk mitigation and that rework reduction so eliminate rework alt together because we have the ability the structure the framework the process control in place to ensure that the work we're doing is to the highest quality standard I'll flip it over Sam will touch on these from his personal perspective we'll get to Sam right now hi everyone I'm Sam pesi work at Anor Bay powder coat we run two facilities
in southeast Michigan mostly doing powder coating we do a little bit of liquid paint and media blasting as well you while I've been here for nine years when I started nine years ago we were the one of the smallest job shops around you know just doing rims for guys down the streets frames stuff like that then we started getting bigger jobs for GM and Ford through our owner finding those jobs in order to get those we really started with our ISO certification and getting that ISO certification is really
what kind of got our foot in that door to really see you know the broad opening of really what's out there for bigger jobs and bigger opportunities for us as a company and with that we ended up starting to get audits from Bae so we can get on their approved supplier list General Dynamics which is one of the easier companies to kind of get your foot in the door when it comes to military codings they don't do much of that on-site audit auditing they usually leave it up to the fabricator to make sure
that the coder themselves is you know dotting their eyes and crossing their te's and all that good stuff so usually that really is where we got into the military work was General Dynamics first and then really we kind of learned more and more as we went of what we can do what we can't do and really how to read the specs themselves specs especially for the military that I learned it's like your own language there are specs inside of specs so you have to learn how to speak spec pretty much is the
way I call it right now I have a quality manager who's been on it for about six months and he still is trying to get all the fine lines of you know the master spec the 5372 for car powder or paint or Coatings how that is broken into your powder spec your wet paint spec your interior your exterior your zinc primers your cleanings in TTC 490 and all of that all focuses onto one spec and all those different specs that all coincide together so you need to know which methods you can use from certain
specs and specs that you know this spec might be outdated and is superseded by this spec but the source inspector over at your customer doesn't know that so then you have to go in find those little bits of paragraphs information to say hey look I did it this way because this says XYZ and you can read this back to do ABC instead so really knowing the confidence in that which takes quite a while really broadens The Horizon of what you can do as coders yourselves each spec is really different it can
be a super basic spec as I just need a gloss back on this set of rims or like I was just talking about with these military specs where you have to read four or five different specs just to know how to process a single part and eventually you kind of get to know those by the back of your hand and you don't need to really look at them constantly but when you have other people involved and you're trying to teach other people those specs are like open books you need to use them quite often in my experience
the military specs definitely get quite confusing knowing which ones you can and cannot use a lot of specs you know will say you have to use wet paint but there's a lot of you know lingo in those specs where you can say oh no we can use powder here or not use powder there and that really gives us the chance to price it correctly as well you know for wet paint I'm going to charge more of a premium than I am going to charge for Powder Coating just because there's more dry time there's more you know
variables with mixing the paint you know pot cot life and all that kind of stuff that has to go through it viscosity testing and all this stuff and all this labor that has to get recorded get onto a piece of paper and sent to your customer so your customer can see that you did all of these things and that is not the simplest thing to do especially if you have a paper system when you have more a digital system it becomes much easier and a lot more efficient to keep all those in one area so you can
really get have the control in one spot sitting at your desk if you really need to big thing is the different way that customers read specs as well everyone will take I'll probably mentioned the 5372 spec a lot that's one I mostly deal with everyone you know Bae lock heed G Dynamics they all have their own interpretation of those specs and they all have different audits for those specs I had a ba audit that we pl passed with flying colors no issues and three weeks later had a locked audit and we
had major findings and all this stuff because of certain things that customer specifically is going to ask for in the specs that your other customer didn't so trying to build your whole system to a everybody really is a pretty big difficulty and we've been working on it for quite some time we started getting military work probably about six years ago and we finally now have got it to we can pretty much make everyone happy with the process that we're doing at one time it probably would have taken
a little bit sooner if we would have been into that digital age a little bit quicker we've been into that digital era I guess for about two years now and we've really seen just the more efficient and more accurate way of data collecting and all this stuff for our guys in the back of the shop to make sure we're doing this correctly doing at the right time and getting all of this stuff in to make sure it gets on that certification so we can say you know the paper trail is more important than the part
when it comes at the end of the day the guys that are emailing you and you're talking to they don't care about the parts they care about that piece of paper that says I did all of this here is everyone that did it here's the traceability behind it and they're going to be super happy with that the auditor will an auditor really won't even look at apart they're just going to look get the paper trail that's all they're going to care about so you have to make sure that your paper trail is locked tight
and accurate if not I mean that's federal crimes if you are lying on aert you know that's how we got into Bae one of our other customers they were doing work for them someone at their shop decided to fraudulently put CS out and I'm pretty sure he's still serving five years in federal prison for it so those are things that you have to make sure you're doing as well because if you put out false information they will come back at you and they will come back at you hard well as you can probably tell
Sam is an expert in speaking spec so number one thing that I would recommend looking at all of the job shops that we work with is you need a guy like Sam took this from he said okay we're painting powder coating wheels two now processing work for lock heed for Boeing for General Dynamics and Sam was involved from start to finish there in interpreting in learning in managing all of these specifications and Sam as you could probably tell is an expert in that speaking spec from the highest level though
it is challenging and it takes time and you do need to dedicate a resource to that because specs they're complicated they're written and maintained by different sources as we see here the manufacturers powder manufacturers chemical manufacturers have different specifications that they write and maintain those need to be considered the government mspc work industry organizations your end customers will take specs from each of these areas and build them together as Sam was talking about specs on specs
and then one thing that's not considered here is another source for these specifications is internal quality specs so picking out pieces of other specs pieces of data that we need to collect and writing our own spec and maintaining and managing that to ensure that we are happy and we're hitting that first time through quality so one thing that I would recommend seeing job shops every single day is if you're looking to get into this space get a guy like Sam on your team that's focused on this and
Sam will go into now kind of Anchor Bay transition of these systems through time yeah so when I started Anchor Bay I literally was bottom run guy entry level unplugging packaging parts and pretty much worked my way all the way up you know started more of the quality management role where we got our ISO certification and during that time we were pretty much strictly on QuickBooks and Excel U so pretty much I was making paper Travelers highlighting it with different colors for certain areas that it
had to go into the shop so that way guys could put their initials down the time stamping the data for the lot numbers for the powder expiration dates and all this stuff and if you just have a guy that just doesn't want to find the piece of paper and not do it and you know actually coat the parts and move it through well then you have a lot of chasing to do of okay well let's see what paint cans did you use or powder box did use which ones are open let's get those lot numbers make sure they're good
or do we need at one point we just got a giant whiteboard and we just put all the types of different powders we have all the expiration dates on when we ordered because we usually order in large batches so it's a little bit easier to try to track those but again smaller shops aren't able to do that so it gets a little bit trickier when you have to only buy so much at a time we were lucky enough to have the work where we could get a little bit bigger a batches so it's easier to follow along so with
that whiteboard you know you have to check okay this batch is now gone now we have to update it if someone didn't update it then you're putting the wrong information down the CT then you have to go back Revis Sears and then you just look unorganized to your customers and then they're going to think well you're seeing you're doing all these things but you're coming back and you're not too confident anymore so then they're gonna start losing confidence in you and then you fast forward you know to
the digital era you know working side by side with chat we were really able to get all of this paper information just on a QR code and just a QR code scan away where you can have all of your data entry you have control stops where if you are at a certain area you can't pass forward because you're not meeting the tolerances that you put in that note and that really helped us with the confidence and the actual really control without micro managing all of your people to make sure that it's getting
done because with the system you could just scan it you can see where is this part at how long has it been there who stepped it in how long did they step ago did they step it in did they put bad information on there and then it flagged it so you have to put new information in there and you're able to sit there and control this literally from your desk I've controlled it from my house while I have a screaming baby on my lap you know so there's things that you can do from home to have that control
as well so if someone doesn't have an answer and it's your off day yeah you don't want to answer it but it's going to be a lot easier to answer it then than on the Monday when you come back and things are all wrong so that really helps helped me out really of you know the control to kind of let go a little bit so I don't have to sit there walk around and make sure everything's getting done all this time because I know it is because if the parts are in ready to shipping they had to have all this
information in order to get to that point and Sam you kind of already touched about the Whiteboard a little bit but feel free to expand on what paper was doing from a specification and management and from a certification Point as well yeah paper was just really messy too you know you have to hold all your files for you know some customers about seven years just like your taxes and stuff like that so storing all of that paper and all these paper Travelers and all this stuff that gets really you know
redundant as well the time it takes to manually fill out and write every single little batch number on every little CT and type every single thing in and all of that is so timec consuming now with this digital age I mean I'm saving hours a week on that kind of stuff versus having to go in and just man you change all the stuff over and over day by day and double checking so it's really hard to rely that heavily on your employees as much as you want to because yeah you think these guys are going to
do the right thing and be there and do it but one day one guy comes in because you know him and his old lady got in a fight or this or that stuff happens outside of life so some guy comes in doesn't want to do his job one day then you're going to be running backtracking and trying to find all this information and on paper it was just so difficult versus moving into the digital age where it's all just there and it's been there and you know as long as you guys are keeping the inventory and depleting
it all right that batch is gone we're on to the next one and we're just simply just touching in these powders to put the information onto the certification itself and we'll get into this sort of transition but from our perspective and being in Metal Finishing job shops powder coaters included but also anodizers plers anything thing that service based nature this is probably the number one area where we see redundant data entry so taking the same piece of information the part number the customer
the ship via the CT needed the specification and we've already entered all that into a system somewhere to kick it off into production but from a certification perspective this is the number one area where we see a repeat of that same work putting in the part number again the quantity the customer the ship to all of that information that we've already put in once well like in Anchor Bay's case prior to this digital ERA this system they were unable to pull all that information in so in Microsoft
Word okay we're looking at our whiteboard and we're seeing what was the last batch did Johnny update that or did he not okay typing in what was the specification what was the part number again how much of that did we run retyping in re-entering all of those same pretty basic pieces of information but then again when you have that redundant data entry you open yourselves up to that human error fat fingering something or mistyping or putting in extra zero where it shouldn't be all sorts of different
situations there that you can come across and that was probably that hours of paperwork generation on a weekly basis by itself was one of the biggest opportunities that Sam and myself had identified and this is Sam's time that he was the one that was generating these certific ifications Sam is extremely knowledgeable in the processing of parts in what needs to happen to ensure that we have quality work being done Sam can't afford to be spending eight to 12 to 15 hours per week on typing up documents
and it's not realistic to go and just hire someone for that task alone so that was probably the number one opportunity that we saw in digitizing this space but then also as he alluded to the difficulties in maintaining and keep being current the consumable material that we're using the powder and then the inefficiencies in redundant data entry so Bas these three bullet points I guess were what kind of drove this partnership and Sam and I and our team worked closely together to build this foundation
for a digital twin of the environment to manage specifications to collect the data and to automate that se generation process and this was extremely iterative as you can probably manage and you're probably thinking the powder coating space the specs that we need to run to maybe it's specs on specs very complicated and how do you possibly consider all these nuances so Sam and I had I don't even know how many hours of meetings to work through what are the requirements oh this is what we said last
week but this is actually what we learned and this is actually what we need so let's go back and iterate on that process pulling in a team of developers pulling in resources from outside from other parts of the industry and considering all of those nuances and we have some of those here that were considered that were part of that iterative process looking at like different types or styles of data that needs to be collected so you might need a mill thickness which is a number you might need a timer
for a mix time on a liquid paint you might need a Boolean for a p fail for a rub test whatever those types of data that piece of information varies so much in the style that it needs to be in so that had to be considered linking the inventory to certifications very important if you're doing military work we have to know the expiration date the batch the lot number the manufacturer the manufacturer's number and we have to know that on a job by jobby job basis so the ability to easily pull that in
had to be considered efficiently collecting and recording data when processing multiple jobs so we know that you don't put one job on one rack and run that another job on another rack and run that if they're going through the same process as happens all the time they're getting the same color they're going through the same process we're going to process them together because that's the most efficient that's going to drive our profit that's going to drive our margin so how do you do that without
printing out six different copies if there's six different orders on this one rack and filling out the same information six different times another Nuance specific to Metal Finishing to powder coating that had to be considered uploading pictures at one point we're probably halfway through this process or three quarters the way through and Sam comes to me says hey now our end customer is pushing us that we don't believe the value of the humidity that you're putting on there we don't believe the temperature
of the plant at the time that you process those parts you could put in anything you need to attach a picture of the sensor at the time that those parts were processed okay another Nuance that had to be considered things like the quantities of measurements required so if we're looking at a spot diagram on a part we need three measurements here and three measurements here well that's nine measurements that we need to take from that one part or maybe it's just one measurement per batch or maybe it's
one measurement every half hour that we need to collect from that part again the timing the Cadence of that information collection of defining internal versus external specs so this goes back to like the source of specifications whether it's the government whether it's the industry whether it's our manufacturers or if it's us if it's an internal spec maybe we want to include data from the first three sources on the certification but not from our internal quality specifications so building out the
ability to identify specifications fitting into each of these buckets those are just some of the high level ones there's many more of those nuances as it is a pretty complicated space and something that we worked hand inand with Anchor Bay to build out that digital ecosystem to manage those specifications and data collection requirements from a certification generation perspective so this is once we collect that data once we manage those specifications and pull that data in other nuances that had
to be required here maybe Boeing requires a different template than locki they care about different information well you can't just have a one siiz fits-all there is no one solution for every single customer Sam has done a good job of pushing his customers in that direction but there's some that require different certifications different templates pulling in the inventory information pulling in what spec was met for cleaning for pre-treatment for the primer for top coat digitally signing these to
confirm to finalize that hey we ran these parts exactly to the process that you have requested and here's the data here's the information that supports that and then lastly going back to why do oems care well they want that traceability so the ability to find quickly and store these records forever digitally but then also give them access to find them themselves so they're not bugging you as the powder coder busy getting parts in and out the door just tracking down or finding this data this information
Sam I'm going to flip it back to you then to kind of walk through going out with the paper s shirts and coming into this digital age what that's enabled yeah so really I mean the biggest Improvement that we really seen is really the traceability and the control you know with moving into the digital you know with paper you know it's really hard to you know get guys to sit there and want to fill out paperwork we found that when we kind of got into that digital guys were a little bit you know more
excited about oh I just pull my phone out scan this thing real quick boom so there was more I guess happiness about do having to fill out paperwork you know people were more upt to do it because they're like hey this I could be on my phone a little bit real quick you know scan this it's a little bit more technology you know a little more cool you know a little bit easier to use as well instead of just oh I got a you know my me personally got terrible hand writing so I hate writing stuff and other
people having to read it because people like what is that a four a nine a p a h whatever it might be so I don't have to sit there and explain my sloppy handwriting to people it's just digital it's easy to read my customers can read it really nice the amount of confidence I have now is huge compared to what it used to be when parts are stepped through I know the information is getting on there because it has to if it doesn't the parts can't move forward they can't ship out of the building they can't
even make it to the spot to get certified so in order to even to get to the certification node all of the stuff has to be input at each single station at each time and it's going to be traced to who input all that information so when you pull up and you print out thist you can say oh Trenton did the blast profile while Shawn did the water break and the mill testing or whatever it might be and if something seems questionable then you know exactly who you need to go to instead of asking nine different
questions about were you here that day was this guy here that day or anything because you know exactly who input that information because it's all digitally traced what's really nice is the control as well there's a lot of stop blocks if you have you know a mill thickness that is between two and a half to five and you're at 5.2 Ms it's going to stop you and it's going to say hey something needs to happen here you need to either go find a manager it's going to flag you and say hey you can't move
this part forward anymore so then you can get your quality manager involved or just someone who has the knowledge to know what do we have to do to these parts are they actually bad do we have to recal recalibrate our Mill gauge is that off how often are we doing that you know making sure all that stuff's on and having this one central location where you can keep all your calibration data all of your data for your chemicals your inventory and all this stuff just makes it so much easier to have it
in one spot because you can look at it whenever you want when do I have to order powder oh guess what there's an alert saying hey I'm under 100 pounds of powder order this powder now send the PO right through the system that we have and boom next thing you know I'm getting an email from our vendor saying all right powder will be there in two days so we're not losing out on any supply chain issues you know luckily you know not too many issues now postco but during covid I mean we had just nightmares
of time with trying to get powder to us you know a lot of powder companies not even making powder or not doing anything like that Sherin Williams hasn't made military powder in over two years and that was our number one product that we used to use when we were coding military so now we have to find all these other vendors and stuff like that and they all can communicate really nice with the system we built they can receive the POS send them to us and it all instantly gets received in automatically
inventory so we automatically know what is on hand at all times and just the generation it is just clicks of a button now my quality manager can make a CT up in probably about 30 seconds flat and that's probably him taking his time maybe checking Facebook for five to that seconds you know so it is just so much easier to just get those CTS out email them directly to the customer now we use it as when the customer gets the CT that's their green light to come and pick up these parts so that way they
know exactly when they're ready they can come and get them we daily have calls from General Dynamics themselves personally hey we need this part from this customer done within the next couple days push it through for us and you know we gotta got to get it done you know we got gu can't shut their lines down you know so we gotta be the heroes of the day sometimes which most powder coaters are because in the powder coating industry we are the last people to touch the parts and it is always two weeks
late when we get it awesome Sam one thing I want to expand on a little bit or maybe a couple but the first thing is the looking cool or the technology in the plan and very important for job shops especially as we look at the workforce and the people coming in there are people that have come in growing up with smartphones growing up with Facebook with Instagram scrolling this way and that to find pieces of data pieces of information that they care for I actually trained not trained but my two-year-old
was able to learn this digital system in 10 minutes because of just the familiarity with technology and as we look at Job shops and the labor forecast for the next two five 10 years whatever it might be well who's filling those gaps of people that are used to the handwriting used to writing out checks used to looking at the newspaper and finding information in a physical form so that that's a very important Point Sam that you brought up and I know your Workforce there is that younger type kids out
of high school that are pursuing maybe a different career path not going to school but are pursuing something in manufacturing but they're still very familiar with technology and that's what they're used to using the other thing that You' kind of touched on there was economically collecting that data so not having to write it down if Tyler writes it down and gives it to Sam to put into a certification that's like three different handoffs of that same piece of information that is not economical if
it's Tyler puts it into a digital system and boom click of a button it creates that assert well now there's zero transitions there of that information maybe one confirmation with the click of a button so being able to economically collect that data especially as the Sears and the flowdown from the primes gets more and more intensive it's going to be ever more important to be economical in our data collection in that regard Sam last thing I want you to touch on you've put in an immense amount of
work and as mentioned spent hours on calls if you could touch on just a little bit the hard work that you put in and what's that enabled for Anchor Bay powder code really the biggest thing is the time saved you know we don't have to spend all this time making sure you know the lot numbers are good and all this data was collected because it's naturally going to get collect with the system that we built so with this time we have we can really work a lot more one-on-one with our people and making sure
our people know exactly what to do how to do it so again you know I like to take vacation so when I'm on vacation I want to be able to have that confidence that my guys are going to be able to do what they do because now that I have time I can get them get with them shoulder-to-shoulder and really say hey this is why we're doing it and why we need to do this instead of just pointing a finger and saying do that you know I'm not a big fan of just someone telling me to do something I like knowing the
why behind it because there's a reason why we're doing these things instead of just doing them so if we're able to spend time with your people and tell them the why behind why we have to do all these things why are we sending out salt safe panels for testing why are we Milling these and why are we water breaking them and why are we doing all these things and it's not just well because the spec says so it's because we need to create a good enough product that we're confident sending this part you
know way overseas you know especially for the military these parts are going to be an extremely corrosive environments you know may it be in the middle of the ocean in the desert wherever it might be wherever our troops are fighting that's where these parts are going so we need to make sure that we're doing our best hand to make sure that those are going to last and be upheld to everyone's standard and just really that confidence the confidence I have daily of my parts going out of this building
is 10 fold easily what was three years ago versus oh especially with salt spray panels you know if you are doing military work you're sending salt spray panels out every 60 days if you're not you are not to spec and you're not technically able to mil goope military parts so every 60 days instead of me panicking like man are these going to pass are these going to be good now I have that confidence that okay I know my guys did the system correctly on these panels I have so much more confidence that
I'm going to get good test results back every single 60 days when these start rolling through and just the amount of work that we've been able to increase when I have Auditors come in and check the system out they really enjoy it they like seeing all of this in one spot easily obtainable where I can click in one work order and we can see exactly what went down exactly the time date who did it how long it took them to do it all the data and the Auditors love being able to see all of that in one spot
if you can make an Auditor's life really simple you know if an eight hour audit takes four hours they're gonna they're going to be a little bit happier with you because it's a lot less work they have to do less questions they have to dig into and when you really close the door on an auditor you don't leave that door open and you have that confidence they stop asking questions but when you ask answer a question you're like you're not too sure of yourself they're going to open that door and they're
going to see really what they can find but with this system I've really noticed there's no doors to be left open anymore all of them are slammed shut because we just locked it down and we got the system to make all of our customers happy so far are there customers that need tweaking here and there yes there's always going to be Source inspectors somewhere down the line that knows more than you do you know so you're going to have to tweak things here or there or you're going to have to dig into a
spec that you're going to say hey this is why we did it this spec says this because it supersedes this so it takes a little bit of time a little bit of you know talking too but most Source inspectors out there do you know respond pretty well when you give them that good evidence too and just the how much you're able to charge extra for this military work as well you know a normal 3-in washer you know for a standard black I'm going to charge 75 cents for the military I can charge three $3 $3.50 for
it because so much of this stuff has to happen you have to run a test panel with it you have to do an anchor profile a water break you have to pre-treat them water break it after that then you have to prime it gel it Mill the primer top coat it Mill the top coat clean it up make sure your rub test make sure you have a scratch test panel and all this stuff and all of that labor goes into it so we personally don't charge for the Sears but I know a lot of all of my competition does we just put it into
the price so that way kind of makes a customer feel like he they just kind of get that with it as well but again everyone has their own product everyone has their own system so do whatever is best for your company itself awesome and Sam as a kind of an outsider looking in it's been really fun to see the progress that you've made I when we started conversations two years ago we were at an older building and looking to go move into this brand new facility just designed and built for you and the goal
or the plan was to move operations from building a to Building B but from this hard work that you've been putting in and creating this digital environment and automating the search generation and collecting that data well now we're operating in two buildings instead of one so to be able to see and witness that from the outside looking in is a true Testament to the hard work that you've been putting in I appreciate that so I want to kind of tie it all together so today we focused a lot on the quality
the spec Dynamic the dynamic spec management the data collection the search generation which is really just one part of this massive picture that is a powder coding Job Shop the massive picture also includes all of your business and production processes and that part of the picture the quality portion is while very important is very intertwined and connected with all of your other processes so when we look at like production maintenance collecting tank checks on a daily basis part planning determining
the routing of these parts through the plant contract review reviewing before we kick off into production that this is indeed the routing that we want here's the specs that we need to meet here's the data that we need to collect the pictures at a company our instru our instruction very interconnected with the quality side of things locations and stations what line what Booth what blast Booth what operator worked on these parts tied into the spec management and the certifications that were generating
which rack was used how many racks what orders were on set rack when it was processed the work orders are definitely part of that so as you can tell that's all the not all but that is a lot of the production processes in or systems in our plants very interconnected with the quality with the sech with that management looking at the business side of things inventory tying in the powders that we're using order entry maybe we have to process to a certain spec so tying in that spec at the time of order
entry quoting certainly drives quoting an estimation the pricing for these parts are is relative to the specs that we need to process the work that needs to go in to meet that customer requirement invoicing if we're charging for certifications if we charge more for certain specs purchasing of the inventory all of this is so interconnected so the big thing that I want job shops to take away from this although it was certainly centered on specs on CTS on quality management it's all so intimately connected
and intertwined so when you're looking if you are looking to how do we get into the 21st century how do we get into a digital age well know that it's you can't look at each one of these individually because that will drive Silo systems that will drive redundant data entry so we need to look at the entire picture which all of our business processes all of our production processes certainly the quality the stuff we talked on today is all connected so when you're looking at that look at the entire
picture we covered just a small portion of that today thank you Kevin great thanks everyone if there is anyone on the webinar that has any questions go ahead and typ it into the questions box now that I'd be happy to ask otherwise I do have a couple here the first question would be there are hundreds of different specs for powder coaters and as Sam mentioned some of them are combinations of various specifications how does a digital system manage that complex the complex nature of that so I can take
the first swing at this and then Sam maybe you can elaborate but Sam had touched on this when we're looking at like the sources of these different specifications and pulling out bits and pieces of different specs from different sources and combining those or making those one so the digital system that Sam uses does have that ability the spec interpretation is up to The Job Shop the spec interpretation is up to you to determine okay what information do we care about pulling out what information do
we feel is critical to the process in these parts and that we can meet and get approval from our customer but yes the digital system has the ability to link specs on specs and pull out those different pieces of information to complete that Loop yeah I mean I think you pretty much hit it right nail on the head pretty much right there you know with the digital system it is really easy to keep track you know what parts are based with what spec which spec we use for each part and how it is traceability
traceable to that one thing that you kind of do have to worry about with specs sometimes is when they do get revised sometimes you'll have some customers will send you the revision hey I noticed this was revised but usually what we do is every six months there's certain websites you can go on where you can kind of check you know is this spec still up to date or was there a revision sometimes that does get a little kind of lost in translations sometimes but most of the times a lot of my customers
are really good with ay bae is updating their specs here's the new ones make sure you get you know the new rev levels and all that stuff same what General Dynamics are usually pretty good at you know saying hey we tweak this back to make sure you know it can fit you know all of this different kind of stuff you know new technologies and stuff like that I know like zirconium phosphate that's a new one that a lot of military customers are starting to kind of get on board with versus zinc phosphate
so now those are kind of becoming more interchangeable versus having to use zinc phosphate versus that so just things you got to look into you know because just be on top of it a little bit too okay another one for the digital data collection how exactly does that occur on the plant floor yeah really it's every job pretty much has a QR code that kind of follows it and each station you know every guy has either a phone or an iPad so pretty much I have to go scan that QR code and then depending on
what node they're at it is going to ask them hey enter in you know your water break test is it a pass fail and then enter in your anchor profile testing to show your blast profile and then once you step that through enter that in then the step button will pretty much light up then saying hey we can step this forward now because the information that is input is within tolerance so now we can step It Forward it's not too much different than yeah filling it out with paper it is just putting it on a
device but at the same point that device isn't going to get lost it's going to be saved there's been countless amount of times where all right yeah we fill out all this paper then next thing you know somehow it blew outside and it got rained on and next thing you know all the data is ruined and you have to refill it out somehow there's no chance for that I've had guys take Travelers and put them in an oven and actually you know it's a crumpled you know piece of burnt plastic so at that point oh
now you got to start all over fill out all this paperwork again talk to the customer if they have a print again because you burnt the print up so having it all there in that system definitely helps being able to have the guys at each station have the data and be able to input it correctly at their stations and yeah the execution there Sam and his team have chosen to use cell phones as we saw in that video other it is a digital ecosystem that's a web app so accessible on an iPad PC out on the shop
floor that really is tailored to the operations of these powder coating job shops okay let's see we do just got one in here how was the migration from QuickBooks to the full system additionally do you currently just use Steelhead or do you retain the accounting in QuickBooks o so that actually is not my forte because I don't really do any of the invoicing I'm pretty confident that we're all in Steelhead now I know there was a time we were using QuickBooks and Steelhead I'm not 100% sure I mostly
just deal with the steelhead part of it Sam so yeah you are on Steelhead and QuickBooks but the integration there you're generating everything in the web based in the The Domain the platform but then the way that integration works is it creates a copy of those invoices in your accounting software so there are Integrations with QuickBooks desktop online Sage 50 Sage 100 accounting seed and those Integrations all work the same where once you generate that invoice send it out from the platform well
it creates a copy of that invoice line for line in the accounting software so all of the Aging reports the handling of money that is in the accounting system but everything is pushed over from the platform okay what could be some of the big picture outcomes do you think it's fair to say that reduced paper demand and manufacture will make it more available to people working on other Industries or studies maybe this could help things like physical book sells toward people already wanting them interesting
so if I'm understanding the question it sounds like we're focused on Powder cating today with the PCI webinar but what other Avenues is there for this sort of digital ecosystem Kevin is that inter I'm guessing that you're on the TR track there okay so yeah the it's extremely flexible the setup of the digital system but it is focused on process-based manufacturing so the focus is when we have someone else's Parts a customer Parts we're providing a service and then we're sending those parts out like
powder cing like anodizing like plating like galvanizing like heat treating all of those are very similar in that process-based flow or that nature so the metal finishing segment has been a core Focus fabrication and machining is a logical build off of that and we're in that space now but in terms of other manufacturing yeah it definitely be a study in terms of how we'd get that done okay how do you denote masking within for parts without drawings like off the sheet type customers so with Steelhead
which is really nice is you can mask a sample you can take a picture and then you can tie that picture directly to that part so if you ever get that part again it is directly going to be in you know that we have like a plugging masking station so when it gets to that node instantly when pops up there's a photo that pops up instantly of that part so if you don't specifically have the Prints but you know how to mask them you can mask one take a picture and then upload it right to Steelhead and be
able to see that in whichever node you want it do you can see it in all the nodes you can see it in certain nodes all really depends exactly how you want to build it it's really 100% customizable how you want to make it work they're going to make it work for you okay there's there requesting if is there an attendance certification you know that because they feel it would be helpful they like all the other data collection that you have in there but I guess requesting if that's available an attendance
certification I'm not quite sure what that might be like a Time tracking for our operators I believe that's what they referencing yes yeah so that would be a different segment of the platform but yes so there is okay all right how long does it take to implement a digital system to get to this level of data collection including the spec management and all the automated search Generation I would say not since it took us quite a long time to be honest you know I mean we were probably at it I mean honestly
probably about five years to really where we got where we're at now I think it could have been drastically shorter if we would have had this digital system five years ago honestly I could see you know six months to a year to really you know if you have the right people you have the people that want to learn want to get onto your system and have that initiative to really buy into your system I mean it could take you a lot sooner but really you need to have everything in place you need to have all
the devices do you have an anchor profile gauge do you have a mill gauge do you have distilled water on hand do you have me and xylene to do rub test do you have all of these things do you have a good media Blaster that's going to give you enough grit so you're confident that you don't have to go and re blasting turn up pressure all the time you have one media that you can use on everything do you have two rooms to blast steel and aluminum do you there's so many things that go into it of are we
even capable of doing this do we have the people to do it if you have everything you have the space you have the equipment you have the people I mean it could take you weeks to do it but if you don't then really it's kind of up in the air until you kind of get all those things in order to be able to do it and I'll add on that but maybe a more Point solution to the digital ecosystem the Erp it took Anor Bay a while but that is because we worked hand inand with Sam to lay the foundation to build out
the entire specs inserts and data collection aspects of it so now that is robust and built and flying it's weeks and not months to create that digital twin of the environment and start collecting this production data specifically in the quality aspect of things well I'm sure CH I think you said you turned a whole shop around in two days wasn't it or what was your what did you guys do over that the one shop was a two days three days it was totally digital at that point yeah that was a unique challenge
I'd say that's not standard but yes you're right Sam we did wow all right Chu could you go to the next slide there that was the last of the questions that had been inputed in here i' just like to remind everybody that the powder coating Institute also does publish the powder coed tough both in English and in Spanish you can just go to powdercoating do powder coed.com it's a free registration free subscription always has some good information published every other month and again it can be digital
or there otherwise I want to thank you my email address is up there if anybody has any further questions I can get you linked up with both Chad and Sam but otherwise I'd like to thank them for sharing all the information and thank everyone for attending this webinar I remember to visit the Potter coding website www.po coding.org for more webinars and training events please watch for a link to the survey and take a few minutes to give us your feedback and otherwise have a great day thanks everyone.