A Clean Shop Grows Customers

Weber Manufacturing, located in Nokomis, Florida, with 16 employees, has been producing high-quality precision machined parts for its customers since 1963. The president of the company, Sam Prost, comes from a family of machinists going back to his grandfather, who opened a machine shop in the early 1900s in France. Sam’s father and uncle, following in their father’s footsteps, opened a machine shop in the United States, the future Weber Manufacturing. Weber specializes in CNC swiss screw machine products and offers a complete range of precision machining services. Weber serves customers from a multitude of industries including aircraft and aerospace, automotive, electrical/electronic, hydraulics, medical, military and defense, recreation, telecommunications and more.

In order to sustain and grow the business in a highly competitive market space, Sam realized that his company needed to do more than just produce high-quality precision parts. They would also have to offer shorter lead times at a comparable or lower price than the competition. Sam soon discovered that having a clean and organized shop had become an important factor for the growing number of potential customers who make personal visits when qualifying a supplier.

Sam contacted the Sarasota-Manatee Area Manufacturers Association (SAMA), part of the FloridaMakes Network and the MEP National Network™, for assistance in reducing lead times, increasing productivity and organizing the shop. FloridaMakes provided lean manufacturing training to the company managers and operators. Starting with training on the fundamentals of lean was key in obtaining buy-in from the workforce for the changes that would need to be made.

This was followed by 5S workplace organization training and implementation. The 5S program not only made to shop floor look and feel good to potential customers, but it also increased operator efficiency. Additional lean training in the development of KPIs, including the elements of overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), helped identify other opportunities for improvement that are now part of the company’s continuous improvement program. Lean manufacturing jump-started the improvement process but since then Weber has contracted with FloridaMakes for a CMMC assessment and have implemented most of their plan of action and milestones, enabling them to go after more defense contracts. FloridaMakes also introduced Weber to the Edward Lowe Foundation’s System for Integrated Growth (SIG) program through GrowFl, part of the FloridaMakes Network. Weber just recently completed the SIG program and expect a substantial improvement in their sales and marketing efforts in the months to come.