Al Labermeier (video link)
V.P., Manufacturing


Al pointed and said, "that set up was 16 hours, today it's nothing."

"This yellow part used to take 12 hours to set up, today it's nothing."

All customer fixtures and tools are resident in their Palletech System.  Set up time has been eliminated.

by Joe Romanowski
Chairman & CEO
 

An example of high technology has been the implementation of a Mazak Horizontal Machining Center Palletech System.  As Al puts it, "two horizontals in a palletech system do the work of 3 stand alone horizontals," but even more critical to their niche has been the elimination of all set up.  That's right... zero set up.  While uptime with stand alone machines typically ran between 60-65%, the palletech gives them 95-98% uptime around the clock.  How is this possible?

Al gave an example of a Kanban customer who called recently at 2:00 p.m. with an emergency requirement of 8 pieces.  Before the palletech Al said he would have had to prepare a "special" quote that would include a "tear out" price, a special set up cost, a re-set up cost for the original job, a price for putting their top man on the job and the cost of special quality control efforts to prove out the job very quickly.  The customer would always be very upset with the price and it would take AAA 2-3 weeks from which to recover from this "emergency" disruption. 

Now, the customer fixtures are resident in the palletech and all the tools are resident in the machine tool magazine.  Al continued his story about that 2:00 p.m. emergency call — after this call he walked out to the shop, went up to the foreman, pointed to the fixture and said, "run that job now."  The next morning, 8 parts were air freighted to the customer with no additional cost and anxiety.  Point and click here (video link) to watch and listen to the streaming video of Al and explain how their culture has been changed with Palletech, particularly in an emergency situation.

As we walked around the shop, Al pointed to a part and said, "see that yellow part, it used to take us 12 hours to set up the old way, now set up is 'nothing'!"  He pointed to another job and said, "that was 16 hours, today it's nothing."

I understand why their business is booming.  They truly do service their customers.  No concerns about China or off shore competition here.

While AAA has been a long term MSI and Mazak customer, I knew that Al and his staff looked at many different brands before they purchased their first palletech.  So, I asked him, "why did you select Mazak?"  He said, "we went to IMTS 2002 and looked at everyone and felt that technologically Mazak had the advantage."

I came away feeling very good about our relationship with AAA and their relationship with their customers.  We are helping them satisfy their customers!  While AAA is located in Oak Creek, WI, they function as if their plant is operating within their customer's plant.  They truly are an "extension of their customer."