At Duval, we take our commitment to continuous improvement and precision seriously. As a part of that philosophy, we actively seek out opportunities to strengthen our internal operations and increase overall process efficiency. This includes initiatives to invest in our current employees and provide them with opportunities to contribute to other areas of the shop.
Cross-Training Employees Provides Valuable Insight for Streamlining Operations
Investing in our current employees provides our team with unique insight that can help streamline operations on the shop floor. It also provides employees with opportunities for upward mobility. For example, an employee who began working in the shipping and maintenance department was recently trained on some new skills, such as reviewing job cards, creating job packages from customer purchase orders, and assembling job instructions for operators on the shop floor.
While working in shipping, the employee become very familiar with the specifications and requirements of Duval’s repeat customers; he also demonstrated an aptitude for remembering the associated part numbers. His retention of this information and his detail-oriented nature made him an asset to communication with audit inspectors.
Duval’s management team recognized these efforts and, in an effort to strengthen the company’s contract review process, offered the employee a newly created position. As the engineering coordinator, this employee is now responsible for making sure each job meets customer requirements. This new role gives our team additional capacity for internal review when preparing a job for operators and quality inspectors. The engineering coordinator works with the team to strengthen internal operation sheets, which document how parts are processed. If jobs go out on the floor and process notes are added, the job cards go back to the engineering coordinator, who reviews them and updates the process documentation. This greatly improves our overall operational efficiency and minimizes opportunity for operator error.
Educational Resources for Employees Provide Additional Opportunities for Improvement
Our employees are also given plenty of educational opportunities to expand their skill sets, keep them up to date on the latest technologies, and enable them to advance into new roles. Grinders, operators, and other team members are able to take classes on blueprint reading, metrology, relevant mathematics, and more.
Many of the classes our employees take are provided through MassMEP. Duval has been utilizing MassMEP for the last five years as a resource for classes in lean manufacturing and shop training. Recently, our entire engineering team attended classes for improving job-processing methods. This—as well as the support provided by our new engineering coordinator—combines the experience of people who work in the shop with those who best know how to run the machines. Our overall process efficiency has greatly improved.
The Duval Guarantee: Precision Is Our Only Product
In addition to providing employees with educational opportunities and cross training, we have also brought in additional quality inspectors. These inspectors have helped to strengthen our inspection standards by creating part-specific, standardized inspection processes for repeat jobs.
For the highest-quality precision grinding services, contact Duval Precision Grinding today.