ATN Training Leads to Retained and Increased Sales for Alabama Specialty Products, Inc.

Alabama Specialty Products, Inc., (ASPI) is a materials processing firm located in Munford, Alabama, that has been meeting the needs of its customers around the world for the past 42 years. Combining the resources of its company divisions, ASPI offers a wide variety of products and services for corrosion monitoring, laser processing, and advanced machining. Their 350,000-square-foot facility houses several manufacturing centers, a materials inventory area, research labs, and a quality assurance area. ASPI is a service-disabled veteran-owned small business with over 200 employees.

ASPI first approached ATN, part of the MEP National Network™, for training and education related guidance for their machinists and supervisors. They needed operator training to teach employees how to read CNC programs and setup training for building tools, setting offsets, and making offset adjustments. ASPI wanted their employees to be able to start setups without crashes.  While evaluating their training needs, it was also discovered that ASPI needed precision measurement training for the same group. They needed training so that operators and machinists would be capable of measuring and verifying their own work to improve production by eliminating the need to wait on quality control.

ATN worked with ASPI’s Chief Technology Officer to develop and implement a customized training plan. ATN provided 40 hours of training to employees where they learned to perform moderately complex math calculations for CNC programming goals and setup and ran compliant parts on CNC mills and lathes. For the precision measurement training, ATN concentrated on teaching employees how to read basic instruments and other equipment such as the comparator, the Zeiss machine, and the profilometer. A short introduction to Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerance was also presented to explain the datum frame, symbols, and demonstrate how tolerances work.