Page 41 - MetalForming April 2013

Bill Adler, president of Stripmatic Prod- ucts, Inc., (shown here with wife Liz, the company’s vice president and treasurer) has served on the PMA Board of Direc- tors since 1996, is a member of the asso- ciation’s executive committee and has served on its local district board since 2008. He’s participated in PMA lobbying fly-ins to Washington, D.C., and repre- sented U.S. industry and PMA on the global metalforming stage as one of four U.S. delegates to the 2012 ICOSPA (International Council of Sheet Metal Presswork Associations) meeting in Ger- many. “As 2013 PMA Chairman, I will continue to refocus the efforts of PMA’s international committee to ensure we grow the value of ICOSPA for PMA members,” he says.
I nurture a truly collaborative and ded- icated workforce at Stripmatic,” Adler says. “And, using support and guid- ance provided by the Precision Metal- forming Association (PMA), we were able to create the business plan used when we acquired Stripmatic.”
Association Membership Benefits Keep Coming
Adler describes the process of com- piling that original business plan for Stripmatic:
“I called PMA and worked with membership coordinator Janet Krall (still PMA’s membership services man- ager, for help developing the plan. She set us up with a ton of industry data, and from that moment on I under- stood the value of membership in our industry’s trade association.”
The association’s value just kept building for Adler, at an accelerating pace. “We put a board together,” he recalls, “and its first recommendation was that Liz and I not only join PMA but actively participate, starting by attend- ing each and every PMA annual meet- ing. That was not a suggestion—it was a requirement,” Adler stresses.
Stripmatic’s growth—sales grew by 500 percent from 1992 to 1997—can be directly attributed to many of the strategic moves the Adlers made as a result of sharing knowledge gained through PMA membership. Hence his theme for 2013: Sharing Knowledge, Shaping the Future.
“The PMA Benchmarking Report provided our management team then, and still does today, opportunities to improve our efficiencies, quality and other metrics,” Adler says. The report allows managers to assess their com- pany’s performance and compare its competitive strength in the industry. It features in-depth analysis of key man- agement, productivity and quality per- formance measures, with information organized by best in class, industry average and profitability.
One Key Measure: Sales per Employee
“Early on, we gained an appreciation for the importance of measuring and improving one of the numerous mea- surables PMA tracks with the bench- marking report—sales per employee,” Adler says. “We examined where our costs were and pledged to focus on and expand our most profitable processes. While the company for a long time manufactured washers as well as wrapped tubes, we made the strategic move to shift all of our resources to the much-more profitable business of man- ufacturing wrapped tubes, and that’s what jump-started the company.”
In 2000 the firm kicked up its efforts to further grow sales per employee, “to try to stem the offshoring tide to Asia being experienced by so many metal- formers, including Stripmatic,” Adler says. The results speak for themselves: back in 1992, sales per employee were $97,000; the figure stands at $260,000. The catalysts for the productivity push: Investing in metalforming electronics, heeding the call of sensor specialist George Keremedjiev, long-time con- tributor to PMA seminars and Metal- Forming magazine.
“Prior to contracting with George, we were running much too slowly,” admits Adler. “We had to improve our productivity and George reviewed our pressroom activities, helped me get comfortable with sensor technology and made me understand the produc- tivity gains we could realize using sen- sors. We established an inhouse sensor lab, trained a technician and installed sensors on all of our dies.”
As a result of the sensor program, average press speed doubled from 35 to 40 strokes/min. to 60 or more strokes/min.; some presses run at 120 strokes/min., while die crashes went from an average of three or four per
A centerpiece of innovation at Stripmatic is this 18-station automated laser-welding cell. Here, laser technician/operator Ryan Jones and the machine’s programmer Bob Best (also the firm’s estimator and IT technician) make final adjustments to the machine’s inspection cameras that help to ensure accuracy of the laser-welding process.
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