Thermal Spray Story - Contd

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In continuation with a previous post on thermal spray story, I would like to discuss about a pitiful situation that exists in several substandard thermal spray coatings shops around the world -- be it thermal spray shops in China, thermal spray in Japan, thermal spray coating shops in India, flame spray coating companies in Europe or the plasma spray companies in Americas -- I am using the word "substandard" from a business performance stand-point -- not from a technical standpoint. What I quickly learnt was that first of all we needed to look at our shop as a business and not a hobby. So, firstly, I re-assigned the janitor we had to become a grit blaster helper and masker helper. It became everybody's job to keep their own area clean. Next, we had a couple of " certified " spray operators who could pretty much dictate the terms of how the business ran. They were the primadonnas -- I am sure if you look around, your shop has such people too. It was the first Friday in my new position, and we had to coat 500 pieces of a certain component with tungsten-carbide-cobalt, to be shipped on Monday. The spray operator said that at 3'O clock his shift ended for the week and that he ain't working the weekend. I thought to myself -- "No wonder we aint getting anywhere in this shop." That evening, I said "every person in this shop including engineers, managers, maskers and blasters will have to become certified operators." And conversely, every sprayer will mask his own parts and girt blast his own parts if necessary. Needless to say, it didn't go too well in the beginning -- but suddenly, we learnt that the best way to have job security is to be able to do everything -- not just one thing.
This concept of "cross-training" which is quite commonly spoken about but seldom practised, is the first and foremost step to be taken if your thermal spray shop needs to be successful. I have come across quality control inspectors who had no idea of how the thermal spray process worked and engineers that have never held a plasma torch in their hands ! And yet these were the people writing process sheets and determining product acceptance!
Add to this the finger-pointing and blame-assignments and you have a perfect mess -- I have seen sprayers complain about maskers and maskers complain about process sheets that are senseless at best and meaningless at worst -- and yet we were tasked with getting more customers and becoming profitable -- does this sound familiar? Me fellow thermal spray colleagues -- I have felt your pain many times before ! ( LOL ) Then came the salesmen -- in white shirts and red ties -- these guys could not spell the word tungsten carbide or aluminum, thought six-sigma was some kind of fraternity -- and yet we were dependant on these smarties to talk intelligently to potential customers and get us business !
This is the pitiful situation that we started this article with.I cannot wait to write my next article -- we need to get the frustrations out first before we can fix them !! See you soon!