Throughout the eighties and nineties, and now in the new millennium, progressive small businesses learned from their corporate partners about re-engineering, team work, quality cells, statistical control and down-sizing. These are just a few of the management "buzzwords" that
describe some of the efforts Anoplate has undertaken to be both more productive and a more understanding employer, supplier and vendor. As with most any endeavor, the degree of success varied but positive progress was made in every instance. Corporate partners such as
Ingersoll Rand trained our first internal auditors. IBM, Corning and Xerox
provided various courses for both our managers and floor leaders. Not all of our training came from giant corporations however. Our customer Trident, located in Webster, New York, winner of the Malcom Baldridge Award provided huge amounts of training time.

As we enter the new century, major emphasis was put on obtaining ISO approval for both our Quality Management Systems ISO 9002 and Environmental Management Systems ISO 14001:1996, which resulted in our November 2000 approval by BVQI. An upgrade to ISO 9001:2000 for our QMS was obtained in November 2003. In addition to the ISO approvals, teams have been working diligently toward approval to the new NADCAP (National Aerospace Defense Contractors Accreditation Program) certification. This will soon be a requirement with certain defense contractors in 2004, that is NADCAP approved metal finishers must be used.

Another initiative, not a new one, which incorporates much of what we have learned in the past, is LEAN THINKING. The emphasis is on VALUE FOR THE CUSTOMER, through improved internal performance. By aligning all the value creating activities for a product or department along a VALUE STREAM and allowing the customer to drag what they need from order entry thru delivery, creates value AS DEFINED BY THE CUSTOMER. The greatest value we get at Anoplate by writing down every step in the chain is for us to critique if certain steps are needed.
At times, when a part has been around for awhile, certain steps get into place that were only intended for the correction of a temporary problem. This is not value to our customer nor is it helpful for efficiency at Anoplate.

How did this opportunity to study "Lean Thinking" present itself at Anoplate? First our customer, Lockheed Martin,, Orlando, Florida, invited Jill Boyle to attend classes at their Sand Road facility. Critical components for the Javelin Missile are finished both direct to LM and others through sub-contract machinists for this weapon. In addition to providing metal finishing services, both machining, manufacturing wire bundles and soldering operations are performed on these critical plastic parts by Anoplate personnel.  Recently three LM engineers spent three
days at Anoplate walking us through the use of "Lean Thinking" principals. This complete process was done by both managers and "hands on" floor operators.  As a follow up this same group of ANOPLATE people revisited the VALUE STREAM ANALYSIS with Dan Peckham, a local "Lean Thinking" consultant. A tremendous effort is now under way to see
which of the concepts can be implemented.  Being a job shop makes it more difficult to customize for a specific job when certain space is shared with other personnel, Without a doubt, several ideas will be implemented and the knowledge learned will be used on many future projects.