Re: Are TPS rings good stuff?
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: TheMachinist</div><div class="ubbcode-body">For what ever it's worth, I can provide some insight into TPS from the inside looking out. First, I'm not a spokesman for the company, nor has TPS approved of such; however I did receive permission to post on a strictly personal level only. I was burdened with another job of handling international custom orders, so I was provided a computer terminal for the task and well, here I am, until they realize I am spending too much time playing rather than working on the computer.
I've worked in the machining world for almost 20 years, ranging from small tool & die shops when I first started to working in the aerospace machining world in the Seattle area shops. Even had a go with working at Boeing for a time, but just couldn't handle the Union crap, cool work at times though. I have worked in some extremely demanding environments in the past and have thoughly enjoyed it. Even worked in a couple high production shops in my past career as well, but not of the precision environment that I have in this job now.
You might say that I’ve worked in about every machining environment that this job has to offer and I must say this is the greatest job I have ever had. In all my years of machining, I have never seen a production shop function in the way this shop environment works. The reason I wished to mention this is maybe to shed some light on how things are done here, since in my opinion, this is where it all happens, of course from my narrow minded observation only, don’t mention that to management though.
Typically, in a production shop, everybody has there specific task they are assigned to do and it’s repeated day in and day out until you either quit, get fired or retire. Not so here, in fact it is the most interesting and rewarding job I’ve had before. When you start working here, you are required to start from the absolute bottom, regardless of your skills or your positioned you are hired into, which at first I wasn’t too thrilled about, since I’ve spent almost 20 years not having to sort raw stock material certifications and cutting raw stock in cut-saws. However, within about a week of starting from the bottom and watching the flow of materials, parts and personnel, I soon realized there was a marvel to their madness.
In all machine shops that I’ve worked in, your work kind of goes on the basis of machine it and forget it, unless you screw up and it doesn’t pass inspection and well you get your wee-wee slapped and you do it again and hopefully not often or you will be looking for another job. But here, everyone is involved in the entire process of the manufacturing. The largest problem that I have always encountered in the machine world is you have to always follow behind somebody else’s mistakes and we all complain and bitch each day about how so and so left burrs on the last part or this feature on the part out of print or the surface finish isn’t correct, but here, each person is involved in a revolving process of the finished part. At first, you think this is insane, I just want to make parts and leave the other crap to somebody else, but the crap left for somebody else is usually exactly that, crap. Great for some and not so great for others and especially not very great for the end customer, and in this case, You. Each person here has a direct involvement from the time the material arrives for inspection, to cutting raw bar stock, to the individual machining operations, to deburring, finishing, inspecting and even to pre-packaging. What this does is provide each person in the production cell to be personally aware and involved in how their specific operations in the entire whole scheme of things in a certain part effect the other departments.
The end result is something that I have never seen in all of my years of being a machinist. Anybody here is capable of looking at a part, rather it be from the initial sawing from a solid billet bar of material or to the final pre-packaging of a scope ring and look at the part and know whether or not it meets all of the visual criteria for a fully compliant finished part, because they personally have done every single step of the process themselves. I’ve been here for almost 6 months, and all the scrap parts that I’ve seen accumulated could fit into a cigar box with room to spare. All the critical features are measured on the machine before every being removed using high-precision Renishaw probing systems, same process as a CMM (Coordinate Measuring Machine), if some of you are familiar with the process. The tools and offsets are controled by SPC (Statistical Processing Control), integrated into macro programming so that the part dimensions are monitored and adjusted through the entire machining process rather than machining a load of parts and then inspecting the parts down the production line for dimensions, there are inspected before they are ever removed from the machine, virtually eliminating dimensional out-of-tolerance conditions, the very best process I’ve ever seen before in a production environment.
I didn’t mean to write a novel here, but been writing a bit as I go during my work schedule today and may have got carried away. Point addressed is this, I’ve seen most of what there is to offer in the machining world environment and this is the best operating system I have ever seen. What does it mean to TPS customers, very well designed and machined and in-tolerance products that meets or exceed every engineering specification and built by Americans who take a tremendous amount of pride in each and every product that rolls away in a UPS truck. And doing all of this at the most highly efficient production levels I have ever seen, ever. I have been asked many times from some of our overseas NATO customers, how do you offer such products at these prices? Well, I say the same thing each time, “TPS does one thing and one thing only, we strive to build the very best scope mounting products in the world and we do A Lot of Them”.
As for the customer service complaints I’ve read about on this forum, I can’t say or comment because it’s not my department, such things are handled in the other building. But, I can say that everyone one here is extremely dedicated to insuring TPS customers are pleased with their purchase and will do whatever is necessary to rectify the situation if there not. Even now, it seems hard to realize the number of orders processed each day by so few people in the processing department. The Zebra thermal printer in the shipping department just continues to whirl along, pumping out thermal labels one after another all day and everything just moves like clock work until the trucks show up to haul them away. Knowing that I’m part of a company who provides products to our deploying troops at internal cost is something that I’m pleased to be part off and personally, I’m damn proud to be part of a company who holds to their values and has proven that as a manufacture here in this country we can not only survive but excel and prosper in today's market.
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Well, sounds like if the CS complaints are resolved, you'll have the world by the tail.