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To me the future of the United States is manufacturing, without a question.
Manufacturing is where the patents come from.
Manufacturing is where the productivity comes from.
It’s where the middle class comes from.
It’s a different kind of manufacturing than what most people remember.
We’re talking smaller companies, more agile companies
getting involved with a variety of different things and competing with the world.
[Music]
We found that manufacturing is done well in the last 10 years,
but for a most small guys, they’re so busy building their business
that they sometimes don’t look up enough
to look around to find how do I go about
trying to solve some of these problems
We definitely rely on the MEP support system and
have learned and developed tools through the MEP system.
I think that’s the assurance that most people have when they're
dealing with an MEP is that there’s a lot of bandwidth there.
There’s a lot of best practices out there to pull from
and a lot of know-how.
All of our folks have worked at large corporations,
so they’ve had many years of learning and practicing
how to get things done.
We try to get a relationship with the corner office
because that’s where we find out what are their real issues.
We’re able adapt those best practices to what they’re
capable of doing, their resources, their capabilities.
And, actually just kind of guide them, mentor them and
show them a better way and move them to the next level.
[Music]
Part of my job to keep developing new products
and look for the next wave.
The Manufacturer’s Research Council
had done a few projects for us in the past and was very successful
and we learned a lot from that,
so I reached out to Jack and his network of people
to say, ok, is this product viable and how would we go
about manufacturing it. He understands manufacturing
and how businesses function and operate.
I told him this idea that was opened up to us and we proved that it works
but, I was still a skeptic.
And they looked at all the data and they said, “Yeah, this will work.”
The next step is how do we manufacture this and
how are we going to take the market?
MRC helped me put together is some end markets that we want to get into
which is the residential roofing market.
Together we’ve identified where there are opportunities that made us
more efficient, and have actually caused us to grow,
even through the tough economic times.
[Music]
InSyte’s been a great partner of ours for a long, long time.
We went through a new product design
process and idea generation and also R&D.
We had some issues with trying to bring through some products to fruition.
Bob from InSyte came in for the R&D side of it, and he worked directly
with our engineer Chris Goetz and he took a good look at
the department and mapped out how things were being done.
They went through probably 10 different ideas of what would be
possible for that new design and we ended up with one in particular.
With the help from InSyte, they were able to reduce a lot of the time
to engineer it as well.
They got the picture and they were able to really focus
the efforts and reorganize some of the tasks and the groups
so that they could be more efficient.
They did a lot of work and it definitely did help.
We were able to turn around a product in record time out of that group.
[Music]
We needed help in manufacturing
a very complicated component.
We also had trouble. How were we going to measure the product.
Together as a team with RTI and TMAC and others,
We looked at what are the needs, what are the outcomes.
and came to the conclusion that we needed to buy a precise machine,
and that’s going to help us control quality, lead time,
cost and improve performance.
The decision to buy this machine was directly as a result of our studies
with them and the research with RTI saying
this is the right decision for the company was to build this machine
and build this part internally.
One of the things we’ve struggled with here at Fiber Systems
is the length of time it takes to develop new products.
TMAC and several other people have worked with us
to streamline our product development process.
We defined the different steps in takes to go from
how do you define a product, how do we design the product,
how do we test the product, how do we ensure that it meets requirements.
We're able to get on task quicker and do these projects in weeks
probably 80% better than what we were before.
Overall, we’re able probably to accomplish 20-35% more
than we were able to do previously.
As our business grows and we develop more products,
we need more people to build the products
it helps the area tax base, it helps individuals retain their jobs
and it increases the number of people employed here.
[Music]
It’s not about a transaction, it is about a relationship.
A lot of companies we’ve been working for 25 years because they trust us.
We have that kind of reputation, and we’ll do whatever
it takes to make the project right.
And, we’re doing it, because of innovation, we’re doing it
because of the successes that manufacturing can have.
We’re here to help manufacturers grow
period.
[Music]