Page 26 - MetalForming November 2010

YOUR ESSENTIAL PARTNER
“We also send people to meetings related to safety, IT and finance,” adds Clay. “PMA offers meaningful programs to support every facet of our business.”
To learn how networking at these middle-management levels benefits Pridgeon & Clay, we caught up with director of quality assurance Cathy Winterhalter during the recent Quality Managers Roundtable, held September 22-23, at PMA headquarters in Cleve- land, OH.
“Coming from the plastics industry, I’ve found that participating in PMA meetings and roundtables has allowed me to quickly get up to speed in the sheetmetal industry,” says Winterhal- ter. “And, at the Quality Managers Roundtables in particular, we all share, contribute and learn from each other.
“Most recently, we’ve been discussing how to reduce the cost of quality, and how to get quality out of the office and onto the shop floor,” Winterhalter con- tinues. “I’ve been able to share with other QA managers our successes at
Pridgeon & Clay, including empowering our press operators to take responsibil- ity for the quality of their work. And, I’ve taken away from the meetings ideas from others related to reducing the cost of quality.
“For example,” says Winterhalter, “we’ve recently created common inspec- tion criteria for each type of product we manufacture. This simplifies our processes and reduces the amount of documentation, resulting in tremen- dous time and cost savings.”
PMAKnowsTraining— The Basics and Beyond
Several education-based resources from PMA have played critical roles in Pridgeon & Clay’s success. The firm recently conducted a series of classes for its press operators called Back to Basics, using PMA Educational Foun- dation (PMAEF) training materials as the curriculum backbone. And it has employed the PMAEF Metalworking Skills Assessment, designed to evaluate
the skills of workers with limited man- ufacturing experience seeking employ- ment or training in the metalworking industry.
The plan evidently has worked, as Pridgeon & Clay earned the 2010 A.R. Hedberg Training and Education Award as part of PMA’s Awards of Excellence in Metalforming. It won the award for its on-the-job training (OJT) program for all hourly production positions.
“As a result of the OJT program, we’re experiencing increased quality and output by newly placed employees,” shares Clay. “The trainees adapt more quickly to the job, are appraised more positively and have the potential to receive monetary increases at each appraisal period.”
New from PMAEF in 2010 is the Occupational Aptitude and Knowledge Assessment program, released in Janu- ary. Modular in design, the 60-item, multiple-choice assessment covers mechanical and spatial aptitudes, math- ematical reasoning and measurement,
24 METALFORMING / NOVEMBER 2010
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