Mick Mainland, Vice President of Manufacturing, explains their market advantage (movie link).

Pioneer does add value like inserting seals, but the real added value story is the system they have developed to ship complete parts in 1-2 weeks.
 

The part will be machined in their new Mazak Variaxis 5-axis machine capable of very accurate, compound angle machining..  The new process will combine 5 machining operations into 1.
 

Substantial fixtures are a key to Pioneer's high velocity throughput.
 

Fixtures mounted on pallets (one with last good part of last job) to facilitate lightening set up.

by Joe Romanowski
Chairman & CEO

Pioneer products http://www.pioneerproducts.com is located in southeastern Wisconsin between Milwaukee and Chicago.  They are experts at machining low to medium volume, high mix, precision, pressure type castings.  They are a family owned firm, founded in 1965.  They machine parts for aerospace, automotive, agricultural, industrial and medical industries.

I felt the Pioneer strength and energy as soon as I walked into their facility.  With 96 CNC machines, $40mm in annual volume and 235 employees working around the clock, I knew they were a substantial job shop.   I was looking to capture their essence.  I wanted to understand what forces were behind their well known success.

I learned many powerful facts.  They turn their work-in-process (WIP) inventory over 34 times a year.  I have never heard of a job measuring WIP turns.  This measurable is obviously a huge influence on their drive to ever faster throughput.  I know inventory turns means cash flow… the more turns the more cash there is available for the business.  Pioneer uses their cash well, as you will see.

Pioneer has developed a number of processes to add value and increase their throughput, most invisible to the customer.  For example, they own their own tool and die manufacturing company, Letsch Mfg.  The fixtures are extremely well designed, hydraulically actuated and built like a military tank.  They don’t have to baby the cuts here.  They maintain a huge stable of extra pallets loaded with the fixtures, many holding the last good part from the last time they ran the job.  When that job comes up again, they just switch out the pallet, calculate their zero points and they’re ready to go.  Set up is lightening fast!

Another high impact strategy is that they treat all relationships special.  As Mick Mainland, Vice President of Manufacturing, stated, “We maintain constant contact and communication with our customers, employees and suppliers.  We believe strong relationships in all directions are critical to our ability to machine and ship parts quickly.”

More added value… Pioneer maintains their own truck fleet to pick up and deliver tools, castings and customer parts if commercial trucking can't meet their needs.  They work closely with Gateway, a local technical college, to continually develop and train their staff.  They also do a lot of finished pressure testing right next to the machines (on special equipment designed and built by their tool and die company).  And, they are QS9000 and TS61949 certified.  As individual value add items they may not be such a big deal, but put them all together and we find a relentless system that ships everything within 1-2 weeks.

Even with all these powerful value add items there is still one that far overshadows all the others.  Pioneer purchases almost all the castings for their customers.  Their customers do not worry about casting porosity, flash issues and all the problems one has with castings.  Pioneer in effect says, “We’ll take care of all these issues.  In fact, we won’t charge you for these castings until we ship you a finished machined part.”  Because of their huge casting volume they have leveraged their casting suppliers to maintain consignment inventory levels in a Pioneer facility.  I think you now see how they utilize their cash flow to maintain a system that assures their customer they will receive parts consistently in 1-2 weeks.  Point and click here (movie link) to see and hear Mick explain the Pioneer system.  Mick estimates that while 50% of the part cost is machine time the balance is added value — all made possible by the cash their huge WIP turns generate. 

What does Pioneer need to remain an industry leader?  Mick stated, “High speed, high technology equipment to maximize our fast throughput niche advantage.” Pioneer operates on a pull system, which also contributes to their incredible plant velocity.  As Mick said, “We don’t expect our customers to wait for anything, and we expect our suppliers to treat us the same way.” 

What is Mick most pleased with as a major accomplishment for Pioneer?  "That we have been a survivor and have been able to grow as a U.S. manufacturing company."

Why has Pioneer selected Mazak as one of their key suppliers?  As Mick said, “Mazak is on the cutting edge of technology. They have out paced the competition.  The machines are more productive with more uptime.  We average about 5% better uptime with our Mazaks.” 

Here is an example of the global competitiveness of the Pioneer system.  They have a Mexican customer that manufacturers manual transmissions.  The transmission parts are machined at Pioneer and shipped to Mexico for assembly.  Why aren’t the parts machined in Mexico?  Obviously, because Pioneer does a much better job.  Now that's impressive!

There are a few last things I want to mention about Pioneer.  Everyone is warm and friendly.  They are humble about their success and market presence.  I believe anyone — an employee, member of the local community, supplier or customer would feel this way about Pioneer.  Their culture exudes sincerity.