Ace Wins Best Practice Honors from the American Psychological Association (APA)

Well-run companies have something in common; they recognize that a healthy culture is rooted in trust and can translate into a significant competitive advantage. Talented people want to work for a management team that supports their aspirations, provides an on-ramp for career advancement and focuses on practical matters like workplace safety. Since 1999, the APA has been recognizing corporations and organizations—both nationally and regionally—that meet certain criteria for a “Psychologically Healthy Workplace.”

Ace recently won “Best Practice Honors” as part of the APA’s Psychologically Healthy Workplace Award.” To qualify for consideration, Ace submitted a comprehensive application and allowed onsite evaluation to see if they met the APA’s criteria for:

 

• Employee Involvement
• Work-Life Balance
• Employee Growth and Development
• Health and Safety
• Employee Recognition

Value Streams promote collaboration.

According to Ace CEO Jean Pitzo, “Some of the practices the APA recognizes in their award were already in place at Ace; things like employee participation in decision-making. For instance, at Ace, we are divided into three Value Streams. The teams meet every other week to review metrics, celebrate successes and check the boxes on workflow, team communication and safety. We have what we call our Flow Stopper Award that gives $50 for a suggestion that eliminates any practice that stops workflow.” The Value Streams help team members establish healthy lines of communication and foster a unity of purpose. Says Jean, “These meetings are uplifting for many reasons, but a key benefit is around the ability to share ideas and then see them come to fruition.”

Sharing the wealth of the organization.

Says Ace President, Dale Ball, “A company’s wealth can be measured in lots ways. It’s not just about profit, but about the opportunities we provide for training, continuing education and celebrating milestones, like work anniversaries, birthdays and family.” Citing a number of measures that resulted in the APA’s decision to award them Best Practices Honors, Jean says, “Our employees are well versed in the requirements of modern manufacturing, like lean practices, quality metrics and on-time delivery. Their willingness to deliver every day helped us make a significant decision, to move to Open Book Management. We actually share financial data with our people so they can see and understand what it takes to ‘make the numbers.’ When we meet our financial goals, we pay a quarterly bonus. When we don’t hit it, we don’t pay it. In other words, we’re in this together.”

What it means to the organization.

For Ace, it’s not just about celebrating the award. Says Dale, “Of course we’re proud of being recognized by the APA. But, more important are the benefits of a healthy workplace to the organization. The cohesiveness of the entire team has improved. We have Kaizens for process improvement and on-time delivery. We’ve even invited new applicants to our Value Stream Meetings so that they can see how people work with each other at Ace.”

“And it doesn’t stop there,” adds Jean. Competing for recognition has made us both nimble and energized. Every aspect of our business from employee benefits to Value Streams and job coaching has been impacted. For Ace, this is just the start; we know that when people are happy and engaged, their trust and enthusiasm has a positive impact on their work – and their lives”

Ace in the news: Ace expands machining cell

Ace Metal Crafts expands machining cell – doubling its capacity

Ace Metal is offering customers the advantage of two additional machining centers that will deliver significant value. According to Ace President Dale Ball, “Our Mazak Equipment is state of the art. By doubling our capacity onsite, we can offer a wealth of machining services to our customers. This gives us more control and our customers greater convenience.“

Some of the highlights of our Mazak Equipment

• All of our Mazak CNC equipment has Mazatrol® more advanced programming. This user-friendly function allows for programming of parts that can be processed right at the controller. The value? 
• No need to program off-line for many parts 
• More efficient processing of short runs 
• High variety of parts 
• We also have MasterCam programming software when more advanced programming is required 
• We have a lathe with “live tooling” and Y-axis–technology that enables us to program milling operations as well as turning. The value? It reduces lead times and run cost by eliminating multiple set-ups and multiple machines. 

Currently, Ace is running two shifts. Adds Dale Ball; “Our machining cell is ideal for customers who are looking for a turnkey solution. As the industry continues to speed up, we are committed to keeping our customers on pace.”

Ace Metal Crafts is one of the leading stainless steel fabricators and named again this year to The Fabricator’s FAB40 list of top fabricators in the nation.

Ace named once again to FAB Top 40 & Ace hosts GADgET Camp for young women

The Fabricator has named Ace Metal Crafts to their FAB 40 list for 2014. In the words of Jean Pitzo, Ace CEO, “We are proud to once again be on the list of the best stainless steel fabricators in the nation. This is an honor we share among our employees, who put customer requirements and quality first every day.”

Ace hosts GADgET Camp

With an eye to the future, Ace hosted the annual GADgET camp, in partnership with Triton College. In addition to serving as a corporate sponsor, along with FMA and Nicor, Ace hosted an educational, onsite event as part of the two-week program. Girls, ages 12 to 16, spent a half day at Ace, where they learned about quality, lean processes and how to brainstorm ideas. The GADgET camp girls were split into three groups and worked with an Ace engineer who showed them how SolidWorks is used, and how laser technology can cut metal into different shapes and then use brake presses to form those shapes into any part they choose. Teams collaborated on a design – in this case a cell phone holder - and took it all the way through the manufacturing process. So when they left Ace, each girl had a product that she had actually designed, produced and finished.

Triton’s GADgET camp recently expanded from one week to two, so that the students could get a deeper experience. As one former student / now mentor explained it, “This is a great chance for girls to get a taste for engineering when they’re still young enough to be thinking about future careers.” At GADgET camp, they get hands-on experience with handsaws, drills and computer-aided design.

They are treated to lunch with company executives and paired with experienced engineers. As one girl put it, “The day at Ace Metal was great, because it gave us a real engineering experience.”

Discover how collaborating with our customer on strategic outsourcing netted a big win for both

There’s traditional outsourcing of component parts, including fab and machining as needed. And then there’s strategic outsourcing. This is the story of how Ace partnered with one of our customers on strategic outsourcing. The result? Big wins for both!

A global leader in process technology, our customer manufactures complex equipment for the food and pharmaceutical industries. Outsourcing component parts on an as-needed basis was an expensive and time-consuming process. So Ace talked to the customer about how we could collaborate to simplify outsourcing and make it both faster and less costly.

Ace came up with two options:

Option one: outsourcing by machine type. This option includes kitting, where components parts are grouped together so that the customer doesn’t have to worry about all the component parts being at the right place at the right time. This option also includes mechanical assembly and subassembly of windows, doors and conveyors.

Option two: full machine release; which allows the customer to send us an order for equipment that might have as many as 700 different parts. Ace manufactures all component parts, inspects and sends kitted component parts to the customer, sequenced according to how they build the machine.

How does the customer benefit?

Our customer reduced and, in some cases eliminated, internal processes like:

• Receiving parts
• Inspecting parts
• Material handling

They also experienced gains in:

• Quality of assembled parts
• Fewer production delays (time looking for lost parts)
• Administration – less purchasing and accounting time
• Reduced investment in capital equipment

How did Ace win?

• We increased our customer’s capacity and won their trust
• We proved that, by partnering, we could reduce both ours’ and our customer’s administrative costs
• We significantly reduced POs, allowing the customer to send one BOM that included a multitude of parts
• Both parties had more ownership of the project

That’s what we call a win-win!

Achieving the perfect weld; Ace offers Orbital TIG applications for process piping.

Some would say, ‘Nothing is perfect.” But at Ace, the perfect weld is routine, thanks to Orbital TIG sanitary welding capabilities. According to VP of Engineering, Kevin Bailey, “The Orbitalum 165 CA is ideal for automatic sanitary tube welding applications. At Ace we focus on sanitary weldments for our OEM partners, and the quality of the weld is as close to perfect as you can get. With this technology, we can offer our customers high standards for applications like stainless steel sanitary tubing weldments, process piping and manifold parts.” In addition to the automated power source, Ace uses the Orbitalum weld head 76S, ideal for food and pharmaceutical applications providing capacity to weld up to 3.0” OD sanitary tubing.

As Ace continues to expand its influence in the sanitary OEM industries, our newly added Orbital Welding System will allow us to better serve our dairy, pharmaceutical and packaging customers.

In a recent interview, Kevin notes, “From a business perspective, there are five key benefits with this technology. 

1. Gives our customers the option to manufacture their TriClover sanitary fitting and process piping applications with ACE
2. Provides consistent, high quality sanitary orbital welds
3. Is a cost effective, automated solution for orbital welding
4. Meets superior sanitary standards for process piping and other applications
5. Opens up new opportunities for our food, dairy, pharmaceutical and packaging customers

Ace Adopts SolidWorks

We listen to our customers

So says Kevin Bailey, VP of Engineering at Ace Metal Crafts, on the decision Ace made four months ago to adopt SolidWorks across the organization. “In fact, most of our customers use SolidWorks, so it just made sense for us to be on the same platform.” He added, “With a common 3D software, SolidWorks enables us to communicate engineer to engineer seamlessly. We can use our customers’ native files without having to incur extra time to save as a different file format. And if we have a question, we simply email native files back and forth and never lose file attributes in translation.” Kevin describes SolidWorks as a win-win. “It gives us work efficiencies and cost efficiencies from plug-ins that third party software developers provide for manufacturing.” The gains accrue to Ace and to its customers as well.  

Ace Makes the "FAB 40" List of Top Fabricators

”Ace Metal Crafts Co. moved into a new building in Bensenville, Ill, doubling its plant size, and expects to produce $3 million more this year than it did last year.”

- The Fabricator

 

According to James Manyika, San Francisco-based director of the McKinsey Global Institute, the “unsung heroes” of the recovery from the Great Recession may be what he identifies as regional processors, and this includes fabricated metal products. Our sector alone has hired back 179,000+ jobs since 2010.

In fact, fabricated metal products had the most pronounced jobs bounce-back of all since then. He attributes this in part to the “re-shoring" trend, as OEMs choose suppliers close to the final assembly plant and, ultimately, the end customer.

To make the list, Ace had to meet criteria including robust growth. But it doesn’t end there. Citing regional players as a strong model, The Fabricator says, “it’s all about location, location, location. You can send information instantaneously from one side of the world to the other, but there’s still no way of getting around trucking a batch of fabricated parts to the assembly plant, which is ideally nearby.” And that bodes well for regional fabricators like Ace.

Customers of the “Fab 40” (http://www.thefabricator.com/fab40/view) were asked how they saw the future of the business. It was a mixed bag. Some sectors like industrial maintenance still struggle, but food processing, a major focus for Ace, is predicted to be on the rise. And on the question of national players vs. regional going forward, The Fabricator had this to say, “The industry may see growth in larger players, which help meet capacity and risk-reduction demands as OEM’s pare down their supply base. But the small, nimble shops probably will dominate the market for some time to come.”

According to Anthony Schneider, Senior VP of BKD Corporate Finance, an industry watchdog, “The job shop is fluid, nimble. This has made smaller, independent fabricators successful, if they have the right culture and outstanding customer service.”

“Considering the staggering number of large and small fabricators in the country, being 24 on the list of today’s Top 40 means we’re doing something right!”

Jean Pitzo, CEO, Ace Metal Crafts Co.