Testimonial
Scaling Through Quality at Veterans Metal
Identity & metadata
Video title
Scaling Through Quality at Veterans Metal
Customer
Veterans Metal
Location
Largo, Florida
Recorded
September 2026
Video type
Customer Story / Testimonial
Primary speaker
Andrew Kossowski, CEO and Owner, Veterans Metal
Additional speakers
Veterans Metal team members and operators; individual names are not identified in the provided transcript.
Industry
Metal Finishing; Aerospace & Defense; Anodizing; Chem Film; Passivation; Wet Paint; Powder Coating
AI-optimized summary block
What this video covers
Veterans Metal shares how it transformed from a small analog plating operation into a fully digital, highly scalable metal finishing facility. The team explains how Steelhead supports production visibility, quality control, scheduling, audit readiness, customer communication, operator guidance, and data-driven decision making as the business grows.
Company transformation
Veterans Metal grew from a 5,000-square-foot operation into a 20,000-square-foot state-of-the-art facility. The company replaced equipment, updated chemistry and processes, implemented connected digital systems, and built a modern operation designed to support aerospace, defense, and other high-complexity work.
Scale & complexity
Andrew explains that the core challenge of scaling is not simply handling more work, but managing more complexity. Veterans Metal now handles tighter tolerances, longer specifications, more demanding customers, and multi-process jobs involving anodizing, masking, chem film, paint, and other operations.
Quantified outcomes
• Production increased from about 25,000 parts per month to approximately 500,000 parts per month
• Veterans Metal forecasts doubling production again in 2027
• On-time delivery improved from roughly 50% to consistently above 95%
• Average days in house dropped from approximately 16 days to about 3.5 days
• Steelhead helped eliminate a backlog of roughly 40 work orders within about one month
• Customer Portal reduced status calls by approximately 80–90%
• Veterans Metal forecasts doubling production again in 2027
• On-time delivery improved from roughly 50% to consistently above 95%
• Average days in house dropped from approximately 16 days to about 3.5 days
• Steelhead helped eliminate a backlog of roughly 40 work orders within about one month
• Customer Portal reduced status calls by approximately 80–90%
Production control
Steelhead helps Veterans Metal monitor what is late, what has not moved, what needs to be prioritized, and where each job stands. Production management uses the system daily to keep work moving and maintain on-time delivery.
Operator guidance
QR scanners guide operators step by step through the correct process. The system can prevent operators from moving into the wrong step and alert them when a tank is outside required process parameters.
Quality & audits
Veterans Metal uses Steelhead to track rework, identify quality trends, create corrective action requests, follow approved process recipes, and generate required reports. The team says audit preparation takes days rather than weeks because required information is already captured in the system.
Customer Portal
The Customer Portal gives customers direct visibility into where their parts are in the process. Veterans Metal says this transparency reduces status calls by approximately 80–90% while building greater trust with customers.
Knowledge retention
As the company scales, Veterans Metal is moving as much operational knowledge as possible into Steelhead so the business does not depend on tribal knowledge or one long-tenured employee. New and experienced users can access the same instructions, prints, masking requirements, and production information.
Sonar & reporting
The team uses Sonar to quickly retrieve metrics such as on-time delivery, average days in house, jobs on hold, rework, and target performance without running full reports. This gives leadership faster access to the specific data points needed for day-to-day decisions.
Core message
Veterans Metal did not digitize simply to eliminate paper. The goal was to create data that is available, reliable, and actionable so the company can manage increasing complexity, improve quality and delivery, and continue scaling with control.
Full transcript
Transcript notes
The transcript below is preserved from the provided source, including transcription errors, incomplete statements, repeated words, and informal phrasing.
Transcript
[00:00:20:10 - 00:00:24:09]
I'm Andrew. I'm the CEO and owner of Veterans Metal here in Largo, Florida.
[00:00:24:09 - 00:00:39:10]
So Veterans Metal is a coding facility 20,000ft². We primarily focus on military type parts, but we also do other consumer parts like motorcycle parts, car parts. We also have an seven license for gun parts as well.
[00:00:39:10 - 00:00:49:14]
But our main focus is five major verticals. We focus on anodizing, chem film passivation, wet paint and powder coating. But we have about 24 different services that we offer our customers.
[00:00:49:14 - 00:01:04:15]
medal. So I started my first chapter of my life was in the United States Air Force. So I was there in the 80s and 90s. I did mostly testing for the Air Force, manufacturing, testing for the Air Force with aircraft like the C-17 program, joint Stars program, love
[00:01:04:17 - 00:01:06:08]
eight different companies. We found this little plating
[00:01:06:08 - 00:01:16:15]
and 5000ft² for employees and the marine veterans. So that's what attracted me to it. And but he did really low end parts, no certifications, no quality of any kind.
[00:01:16:20 - 00:01:17:14]
So I saw it as a
[00:01:17:17 - 00:01:36:08]
what makes veterans metal different is our ability to communicate. So it's not necessarily the processes or the equipment or even the quality, but the fact that we are proactive communicators, constantly communicating with our customers. That is the number one thing that the customers tell us that they like about veterans metal is how much we communicate with them when it comes to their parts.
[00:01:36:10 - 00:01:45:11]
Why? Because they feel it shows that we care about their parts, which of course we do. So by having that open communication and dialog, it represents that both us and the customers are going to succeed.
[00:01:45:12 - 00:02:01:23]
When we first started with steelhead back in 2022, we were doing about 25,000 parts a month. Right now we're doing a half a million parts a month, and our forecast is to double that in 2027. We have a lot of capacity, but of course there was a lot of trials and testing along the way.
[00:02:02:01 - 00:02:21:02]
Steel has been with us every step of the way as well. So when we first started we had 5000ft². What happened? We grew into 20,000ft². Brand new state of the art facility. All the equipment was changed. We also changed all the chemistry. We changed our process. And of course, we implemented our steelhead system as well, along with other systems that we have in place.
[00:02:21:03 - 00:02:27:17]
Everything in the plant is connected. We are now fully digital shop and probably one of the most modern shops in the state of Florida.
[00:02:27:19 - 00:02:37:20]
the biggest challenge has been for us is not handling more work, but how to handle more complexity. Right. So a lot of people think, oh, when you implement a digital system, you're getting rid of
[00:02:37:22 - 00:02:43:07]
and you're you're helping the work volume. No, it's about the complexity of the work that you're trying to solve.
[00:02:43:08 - 00:03:04:14]
That's the problem you're trying to solve. It's the complexity. We have more specs now that we're doing. We have more high end customers that are in the aerospace and defense industry. They require really tight tolerances, very lengthy specifications, multi complex parts. We don't just anodized part, we may anodized it. We may mask it, we may paint it or we may anodized it can film and paint it and mask it.
[00:03:04:14 - 00:03:17:16]
So the complexity is huge compared to where we were four years ago. A human being really can't handle that level of complexity, especially if you're scaling the business. So by using steelhead, it aims to address that complexity as opposed to making the job harder.
[00:03:17:18 - 00:03:30:20]
Sometimes I get calls from other competitors, or maybe not competitors in other parts of the country. They ask me, hey Andrew, I'm thinking about steelhead. Why did you pick steelhead? And I tell them I picked steelhead because it's a scalable product, because I intend to scale my business.
[00:03:30:22 - 00:03:40:08]
I'm not trying to get rid of paper. I'm trying to handle complexity. And one of the main reasons I use steelhead selected steelhead because they were focused on my industry.
[00:03:40:12 - 00:03:50:04]
All of it was analog where I worked at previously. We used QuickBooks desktop and then moved on to QuickBooks online to essentially root all of our parts,
[00:03:50:05 - 00:03:51:08]
It was not the most,
[00:03:51:12 - 00:03:55:00]
refined process for the production floor.
[00:03:55:02 - 00:04:07:00]
It's now the visibility that I have the ability to make decisions, access to real information, not bogus information. Be able to focus on my quality, to be able to focus on training of my staff.
[00:04:07:01 - 00:04:25:05]
Being able to have something that sees when something hasn't moved without me physically having eyes on it. It's really important for on time delivery because I can miss it. I'm human. I'm going to make mistakes. But this takes everything that's in the database and it can tell me off the rip what's what's late, what what hasn't been moved?
[00:04:25:05 - 00:04:47:03]
Steelhead is impacted my on time delivery significantly before I started. And very early on using steelhead, we were like 40 work orders behind. And implementing steelhead got us caught up within a month, and it's able to keep us ahead where our on time delivery was probably 50%
[00:04:47:03 - 00:04:50:09]
and now we're above 95% consistently.
[00:04:50:14 - 00:04:53:12]
Same with average days in house.
[00:04:53:14 - 00:04:56:00]
We're turning around work quicker because we're able
[00:04:56:01 - 00:05:05:12]
schedule it better. We used to be at 16 days, average days in house, and now we're at like three and a half days. Average days in house.
[00:05:05:14 - 00:05:09:01]
there was a point in time where I was actually manually writing out a schedule.
[00:05:09:03 - 00:05:19:09]
Because I like to be very hands on. And so I used to actually write out a schedule for all of our different processes and be like, these are the things we need to get done today because they are behind.
[00:05:19:14 - 00:05:28:11]
now I know Cory, our production manager, uses that religiously, like every day to make sure that we're keeping on track with what we need to push through on the line.
[00:05:28:13 - 00:05:42:09]
that it's saved us almost every day. It gives that the operator no option to go in the wrong process, because when they're using that QR scanner, they're not able to go in the wrong tank because it's telling them step by step which process to go in
[00:05:42:11 - 00:05:48:09]
in the old days, a processor could run a job whether the tanks were in parameter or
[00:05:48:11 - 00:06:05:13]
Having a scanners, if the employee goes to run a job and the tanks are not in their correct parameters to be ran at that time, the scanner will tell them that you are running process out of your parameters, and that kind of alleviates any headaches we've had, like in the past.
[00:06:05:19 - 00:06:24:18]
We can make up a quality report, see how many reworks in the last quarter have been done, and see if there is any trending patterns. We're also able to make any, corrective action requests through steelhead. It makes those types of things a lot easier and a lot more accessible to the whole
[00:06:24:19 - 00:06:34:02]
A lot of people spend weeks getting ready for accreditation. We know we spend days because everything is captured, and we're following that process based on our recipe that's already loaded in steelhead.
[00:06:34:02 - 00:06:41:08]
And then the output of the reports, which are required by Cap, are already there. So it just makes it so much easier process to get that certified.
[00:06:41:10 - 00:06:55:09]
From an external perspective, we have that visibility through the customer portal. The customer gets to see where our parts are. A customer portal loan has reduced our call by probably by 80 or 90%, and the fact that we're so transparent builds this trust with our customer.
[00:06:55:09 - 00:07:04:02]
It's been really nice to be able to have that added layer of communication with the portal, because they can see exactly where their parts are.
[00:07:04:03 - 00:07:26:09]
as we're growing, really inputting everything as much as we can into the system, that way we're not relying so much on, you know, tribal knowledge or that one person that been here for 30 years and they've been doing it this way, making sure everything is input into the system that way, whether it's a veteran user or a new user can go in and they can have success.
[00:07:26:09 - 00:07:33:23]
way I use steelhead is it facilitates looking up prints and like, specific instructions for masking.
[00:07:33:23 - 00:07:44:21]
at my last company, I would have to wait for the quality manager to, like, explain it to me or, like, have them print out the actual masking print.
[00:07:44:22 - 00:07:50:17]
And because it still had, you could just go on the website and it's all there.
[00:07:50:22 - 00:08:06:22]
It is so convenient. It's so easy. I don't know, it's just because I, I before the old system and we moved, I used to pen and paper, pen and paper. So now it's like all you know online computers. So click click click. It's just so easy. I love it.
[00:08:07:03 - 00:08:19:13]
Every time an order comes in, we receive it. I put it in the system. I put the part numbers in the system. We do the measurements as well with the quantities, and then we attach it to the Po.
[00:08:19:17 - 00:08:40:01]
the top three things I like to search in sonar are on time delivery, average days in house and how many jobs are on hold. So those three are going to tell me how well I'm doing as far as production. And, if we're having a lot of rework and if we're hitting our targets for the month.
[00:08:40:01 - 00:08:54:01]
Instead of just going into reporting and running a full report, I just want this one data point. Spit out this data point for me. And and it does that for you. So I really enjoy it. It cuts cuts down on my time. It saves me a lot of time.
[00:08:54:03 - 00:09:08:18]
In the past couple of years, our focus and our mantra has been growth through quality. And we added the people we had, the equipment, we had the process. And of course we have still had to support us on that. We're changing that to scale through quality. Why? Because we want to now support the growth of our
[00:09:08:20 - 00:09:25:15]
We were really fortunate to be able to partner with steelhead early in their history and early in our history. I also have an important role here as the board of directors in the Bay Area Manufacturing Association. One question I always get asked is, Andrew, why did you modernize your shop? Why did you digitize your shop? And I always say the same thing.
[00:09:25:15 - 00:09:36:15]
I didn't do it to get rid of paper. I did it because I wanted data that was available, reliable and actionable. It's the only way I'm gonna be able to make decisions, to be able to scale our business.
[00:09:36:17 - 00:09:38:08]
We're veterans metal and we run on
I'm Andrew. I'm the CEO and owner of Veterans Metal here in Largo, Florida.
[00:00:24:09 - 00:00:39:10]
So Veterans Metal is a coding facility 20,000ft². We primarily focus on military type parts, but we also do other consumer parts like motorcycle parts, car parts. We also have an seven license for gun parts as well.
[00:00:39:10 - 00:00:49:14]
But our main focus is five major verticals. We focus on anodizing, chem film passivation, wet paint and powder coating. But we have about 24 different services that we offer our customers.
[00:00:49:14 - 00:01:04:15]
medal. So I started my first chapter of my life was in the United States Air Force. So I was there in the 80s and 90s. I did mostly testing for the Air Force, manufacturing, testing for the Air Force with aircraft like the C-17 program, joint Stars program, love
[00:01:04:17 - 00:01:06:08]
eight different companies. We found this little plating
[00:01:06:08 - 00:01:16:15]
and 5000ft² for employees and the marine veterans. So that's what attracted me to it. And but he did really low end parts, no certifications, no quality of any kind.
[00:01:16:20 - 00:01:17:14]
So I saw it as a
[00:01:17:17 - 00:01:36:08]
what makes veterans metal different is our ability to communicate. So it's not necessarily the processes or the equipment or even the quality, but the fact that we are proactive communicators, constantly communicating with our customers. That is the number one thing that the customers tell us that they like about veterans metal is how much we communicate with them when it comes to their parts.
[00:01:36:10 - 00:01:45:11]
Why? Because they feel it shows that we care about their parts, which of course we do. So by having that open communication and dialog, it represents that both us and the customers are going to succeed.
[00:01:45:12 - 00:02:01:23]
When we first started with steelhead back in 2022, we were doing about 25,000 parts a month. Right now we're doing a half a million parts a month, and our forecast is to double that in 2027. We have a lot of capacity, but of course there was a lot of trials and testing along the way.
[00:02:02:01 - 00:02:21:02]
Steel has been with us every step of the way as well. So when we first started we had 5000ft². What happened? We grew into 20,000ft². Brand new state of the art facility. All the equipment was changed. We also changed all the chemistry. We changed our process. And of course, we implemented our steelhead system as well, along with other systems that we have in place.
[00:02:21:03 - 00:02:27:17]
Everything in the plant is connected. We are now fully digital shop and probably one of the most modern shops in the state of Florida.
[00:02:27:19 - 00:02:37:20]
the biggest challenge has been for us is not handling more work, but how to handle more complexity. Right. So a lot of people think, oh, when you implement a digital system, you're getting rid of
[00:02:37:22 - 00:02:43:07]
and you're you're helping the work volume. No, it's about the complexity of the work that you're trying to solve.
[00:02:43:08 - 00:03:04:14]
That's the problem you're trying to solve. It's the complexity. We have more specs now that we're doing. We have more high end customers that are in the aerospace and defense industry. They require really tight tolerances, very lengthy specifications, multi complex parts. We don't just anodized part, we may anodized it. We may mask it, we may paint it or we may anodized it can film and paint it and mask it.
[00:03:04:14 - 00:03:17:16]
So the complexity is huge compared to where we were four years ago. A human being really can't handle that level of complexity, especially if you're scaling the business. So by using steelhead, it aims to address that complexity as opposed to making the job harder.
[00:03:17:18 - 00:03:30:20]
Sometimes I get calls from other competitors, or maybe not competitors in other parts of the country. They ask me, hey Andrew, I'm thinking about steelhead. Why did you pick steelhead? And I tell them I picked steelhead because it's a scalable product, because I intend to scale my business.
[00:03:30:22 - 00:03:40:08]
I'm not trying to get rid of paper. I'm trying to handle complexity. And one of the main reasons I use steelhead selected steelhead because they were focused on my industry.
[00:03:40:12 - 00:03:50:04]
All of it was analog where I worked at previously. We used QuickBooks desktop and then moved on to QuickBooks online to essentially root all of our parts,
[00:03:50:05 - 00:03:51:08]
It was not the most,
[00:03:51:12 - 00:03:55:00]
refined process for the production floor.
[00:03:55:02 - 00:04:07:00]
It's now the visibility that I have the ability to make decisions, access to real information, not bogus information. Be able to focus on my quality, to be able to focus on training of my staff.
[00:04:07:01 - 00:04:25:05]
Being able to have something that sees when something hasn't moved without me physically having eyes on it. It's really important for on time delivery because I can miss it. I'm human. I'm going to make mistakes. But this takes everything that's in the database and it can tell me off the rip what's what's late, what what hasn't been moved?
[00:04:25:05 - 00:04:47:03]
Steelhead is impacted my on time delivery significantly before I started. And very early on using steelhead, we were like 40 work orders behind. And implementing steelhead got us caught up within a month, and it's able to keep us ahead where our on time delivery was probably 50%
[00:04:47:03 - 00:04:50:09]
and now we're above 95% consistently.
[00:04:50:14 - 00:04:53:12]
Same with average days in house.
[00:04:53:14 - 00:04:56:00]
We're turning around work quicker because we're able
[00:04:56:01 - 00:05:05:12]
schedule it better. We used to be at 16 days, average days in house, and now we're at like three and a half days. Average days in house.
[00:05:05:14 - 00:05:09:01]
there was a point in time where I was actually manually writing out a schedule.
[00:05:09:03 - 00:05:19:09]
Because I like to be very hands on. And so I used to actually write out a schedule for all of our different processes and be like, these are the things we need to get done today because they are behind.
[00:05:19:14 - 00:05:28:11]
now I know Cory, our production manager, uses that religiously, like every day to make sure that we're keeping on track with what we need to push through on the line.
[00:05:28:13 - 00:05:42:09]
that it's saved us almost every day. It gives that the operator no option to go in the wrong process, because when they're using that QR scanner, they're not able to go in the wrong tank because it's telling them step by step which process to go in
[00:05:42:11 - 00:05:48:09]
in the old days, a processor could run a job whether the tanks were in parameter or
[00:05:48:11 - 00:06:05:13]
Having a scanners, if the employee goes to run a job and the tanks are not in their correct parameters to be ran at that time, the scanner will tell them that you are running process out of your parameters, and that kind of alleviates any headaches we've had, like in the past.
[00:06:05:19 - 00:06:24:18]
We can make up a quality report, see how many reworks in the last quarter have been done, and see if there is any trending patterns. We're also able to make any, corrective action requests through steelhead. It makes those types of things a lot easier and a lot more accessible to the whole
[00:06:24:19 - 00:06:34:02]
A lot of people spend weeks getting ready for accreditation. We know we spend days because everything is captured, and we're following that process based on our recipe that's already loaded in steelhead.
[00:06:34:02 - 00:06:41:08]
And then the output of the reports, which are required by Cap, are already there. So it just makes it so much easier process to get that certified.
[00:06:41:10 - 00:06:55:09]
From an external perspective, we have that visibility through the customer portal. The customer gets to see where our parts are. A customer portal loan has reduced our call by probably by 80 or 90%, and the fact that we're so transparent builds this trust with our customer.
[00:06:55:09 - 00:07:04:02]
It's been really nice to be able to have that added layer of communication with the portal, because they can see exactly where their parts are.
[00:07:04:03 - 00:07:26:09]
as we're growing, really inputting everything as much as we can into the system, that way we're not relying so much on, you know, tribal knowledge or that one person that been here for 30 years and they've been doing it this way, making sure everything is input into the system that way, whether it's a veteran user or a new user can go in and they can have success.
[00:07:26:09 - 00:07:33:23]
way I use steelhead is it facilitates looking up prints and like, specific instructions for masking.
[00:07:33:23 - 00:07:44:21]
at my last company, I would have to wait for the quality manager to, like, explain it to me or, like, have them print out the actual masking print.
[00:07:44:22 - 00:07:50:17]
And because it still had, you could just go on the website and it's all there.
[00:07:50:22 - 00:08:06:22]
It is so convenient. It's so easy. I don't know, it's just because I, I before the old system and we moved, I used to pen and paper, pen and paper. So now it's like all you know online computers. So click click click. It's just so easy. I love it.
[00:08:07:03 - 00:08:19:13]
Every time an order comes in, we receive it. I put it in the system. I put the part numbers in the system. We do the measurements as well with the quantities, and then we attach it to the Po.
[00:08:19:17 - 00:08:40:01]
the top three things I like to search in sonar are on time delivery, average days in house and how many jobs are on hold. So those three are going to tell me how well I'm doing as far as production. And, if we're having a lot of rework and if we're hitting our targets for the month.
[00:08:40:01 - 00:08:54:01]
Instead of just going into reporting and running a full report, I just want this one data point. Spit out this data point for me. And and it does that for you. So I really enjoy it. It cuts cuts down on my time. It saves me a lot of time.
[00:08:54:03 - 00:09:08:18]
In the past couple of years, our focus and our mantra has been growth through quality. And we added the people we had, the equipment, we had the process. And of course we have still had to support us on that. We're changing that to scale through quality. Why? Because we want to now support the growth of our
[00:09:08:20 - 00:09:25:15]
We were really fortunate to be able to partner with steelhead early in their history and early in our history. I also have an important role here as the board of directors in the Bay Area Manufacturing Association. One question I always get asked is, Andrew, why did you modernize your shop? Why did you digitize your shop? And I always say the same thing.
[00:09:25:15 - 00:09:36:15]
I didn't do it to get rid of paper. I did it because I wanted data that was available, reliable and actionable. It's the only way I'm gonna be able to make decisions, to be able to scale our business.
[00:09:36:17 - 00:09:38:08]
We're veterans metal and we run on
Taxonomy tags
Industry
Metal Finishing; Aerospace; Defense; Anodizing; Chem Film; Passivation; Wet Paint; Powder Coating; Manufacturing
Feature/module
Production Tracking; Scheduling; QR Scanning; Process Control; Quality Management; Corrective Actions; Customer Portal; Sonar; Reporting; Digital Work Instructions
Workflow category
Receiving; Production; Anodizing; Chem Film; Masking; Painting; Powder Coating; Quality; Scheduling; Shipping; Customer Service
Use case
Scaling manufacturing operations; managing production complexity; improving on-time delivery; reducing turnaround time; paperless manufacturing; quality control; audit readiness; customer self-service; tribal knowledge reduction; data-driven decision making
Theme
Scale; Quality; Visibility; Complexity; Efficiency; Customer Trust; Digital Transformation; Data; Growth
Stage of journey
Advocacy