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, a job shop on the edge of Bloomington, Indiana, specializing in aviation and defense, has seen a lot of change in the last few years — and equally much growth. Johnny Goode, its current president, comes from a law enforcement background and only started with the company (and the manufacturing industry) around 2020. Nevertheless, he quickly familiarized himself with the industry, leveraging his leadership experience (and the technical expertise of his father, MSP’s previous president) to modernize the shop’s equipment and software.

The shop now sports an expanded range of capabilities while proving much more efficient. Some processes can be days shorter, while jobs requiring complex programming can be months shorter.

In this shop tour, we’ll see and hear about some of the tools Goode has used to overhaul MSP's processes and explore some of the departments that Goode has relied on to consolidate processes and improve the shop’s efficiency.

Transcript:

Evan Doran (Senior Associate Editor, 91ÊÓƵÍøÕ¾ÎÛ): Hi, I'm Evan Doran with 91ÊÓƵÍøÕ¾ÎÛ. We're here today at MSP Manufacturing, an aviation and defense focused job shop in Bloomington, Indiana.

Johnny Goode (President, MSP Manufacturing): The company was founded in 1943. It started making tachometers for planes for World War II. I came in and started working part-time because I was still working full-time as a narcotics detective. I had a job offer from the FBI to be a special agent from them. But after working here and kind of seeing the culture and the mission set here, I kind of fell in love with it.

Evan: Over the past few years, MSP has grown considerably due to its new president's focus on grants, new software—

Johnny: CAM Assist, ProShop and some of the other processes we've implemented. It makes our flow so much smoother.

Evan: —And an open shop culture. Join us on this episode of View from My Shop as we take to MSP’s shop floor and learn more.

Johnny: Then this is our machine shop. What's cool is everything on this side of the line, and also this , are all new to us since 2022. Prior to 2022, we had, no five-access capabilities, we had a really old water jet. So, we did a bunch of capital purchases in 2022. So, we bought our Haas UMC 750, we also bought this, UMC 500 with pallet pool, which was helped by the state of Indiana with the Manufacturing Readiness Grant. They paid for half of the machine, and then we upgraded our waterjet to be able to, just do things a little bit more accurately. And we had one that had, doubled the footprint and we just only used a small section. We consolidated to a smaller one, and then, we won a large contract with BAE, doing parts for them. So we invested in, a Nakamura lathe with a Patriot Edge bar feeder. So we consolidated what was taking two ops on a lathe, sometimes two to four ops on a mill, and now they're doing it in one op. So it's coming out and it's also automated, so it's running lights out.

I had a close friend who, was on SWAT with me that started his own company and was looking for a manufacturer. So we started manufacturing for him. Some defense companies we reached out, were like, hey, we'll do whatever work you guys need done. So that's when I, we got into kind of that woodworking stuff. And then we just, I rebranded the company from MSP Aviation to MSP Manufacturing.

And then what's cool is every single one of our mills is fourth-axis capable. So, we have a rotary for every single one of our mills. And then we, have some 5th Axis work holdings on them. Like the company 5th Axis. Our long-term strategy is to try to outfit every machine with the same workholdings so that if we need to move jaws or parts to other machines that's using the same base plates. And the goal is to also have our CMM also have the 5th Axis rock plate as well so that when we're measuring parts, we won't even have to take them out of the jaws or the workholdings. So that if there is a mistake, they're able to put it back on the machine within two tenths and make the fix if it's possible. if not, you might have to add another piece of raw material to it.

So a lot of these older Hurcos that we have do a really good job on our core product, which are, you know, things that are generally found in the cockpit of almost every commercial airline. So some of our core products include instrument cases and the case assembly. So, a case, bezel and glass and, they're usually painted and depends on solder or epoxy, but the bezels are fixated to the glass and then attach to the case, and that's what actually holds the instrument. So that glass part of that case assembly is what you'll see on, the user side of the cockpit. And then we make clamps that hold, the case to the back of the cockpit, avionics cooling ducts that sit in between the pilot and copilot that cool the instruments, and then, some switch guards that cover some critical switches you don't want to accidentally press. And that as well as a handful of other kind of random parts that different OEM put inside the cockpit.

I thought this would be a lot better at creating a future for my children as well as [a chance to] live a somewhat more normal lifestyle, but from there, I—my dad promoted me to the vice president in November, and that's when I really started working full time. I worked about two years as a vice president. And then I learned, you know, did a lot of our accounting and financial, and I started learning a lot more about the operations side and as well as kind of the HR side.

So before we got the Nakamura, we had just like 12-foot bars of quarter-inch material. So we made this and we ran with that for like eight months before we were able to get the Nakamura in here. And I mean, we stayed ahead of their production schedule with it and wasn't lights out, but it had longer run time so that he could we had one operator pretty much managing all the lathes.

Evan: I guess kind of with that, do you all just run one shift?

Johnny: Yeah, generally we run one shift Monday through Thursday, but we do have a skeleton shift of, like, two younger kids that just prefer not to wake up or as early. So we run 6 to 4:30 on the first shift and then 2 to 12:30 on that second shift. And, generally those two individuals are able to keep, you know, half of the machines, if not all the machines running. So we get really good efficiency out of the out of just those two.

Evan: So how much space do you have, like, square footage-wise for the shop?

Johnny: All of MSP occupies about 25,000 square feet. So I would say maybe 9,000 square feet is the machine shop.

Then we use ProShop as our ERP. We started implementing that in 2022 as well. And that's been really helpful for just visibility from everyone's perspective. But I think without that, we wouldn't be able to get ahead kind of how we are now. So that was also a big piece of the equation.

Evan: Sure. Can you go into that a little more? Like, what all this brought to the table?

Johnny: Yeah. So prior to that, our old ERP system really had a bunch of modules that didn't talk to each other. And it was really hard to see things at like a 30,000 [foot] view. So, like what is my total month's work? What do I have? And hours needed to complete job? And it was just like, purchasing wasn't really talking to the work order. So, it was very hard to be efficient on how you're ordering things, how you're scheduling things. This whiteboard behind you was kind of how they schedule day prior to our ERP system.

So with ProShop, we're able to pretty much see everything from the estimate to the invoice, and everybody can click on it and it's all, all has links built in. So like if you're on a part and you want to — or a work order and you want to see more information on the part, you just click the part and it takes you to the part level so you can see the history of rev changes, how many time it's been made, and everything's importable and exportable as well.

So, I can do a lot of analysis through Excel, Microsoft Power BI, and a lot of things in real time where I just wasn't able to do that. And then we're also able to say, like with our core product, we generally have like a two-year forecast. So if another company orders that same part, we're able to see, as soon as that part's taken out of inventory, it's like, okay, now we're going to be short in October of next year by this part, So let's build another work order to fund that. And it does that automatically. So we're that's I think a big part of why we're able to stay ahead, is that — at midnight the system is always cross-referencing what you have in work orders, orders and inventory and notifying you when you're deficient.

This is our tumbling room and deburring. But it also has a few different ovens in there because we do some of our own heat treating in-house.

So, one of these parts, they start out as a round tube and they heat it up and then bring it to size. And then they have on their work orders what numbers coordinate to what part.

And any time that we're able to, I always try to put like the, either the what, like for aerospace, the aircraft that it's going to or especially if it is mission critical on the work order. So like we had an example where a Chinook needed parts like yesterday. And I put that on the work order “as soon as possible, it's for, Chinook,” and like it flowed through here so fast because the guys were all like, “let's get this to the warfighter.” And then, this is all the filtration that we need to do just for the waterjet.

So although, like the main part of this department is kind of that secondary ops or finishing up the machine, this is also where a lot of the jobs will start. So they'll get, you know, saw cut if we don't have the material already ordered to cut. And then we have a few punch presses back here where it will, bend or form some of our bands that go to the avionics clamps that we manufacture. And then we have a couple other jet saws back here and an additional Bridgeport.

And so this is our assembly department, and I think this is kind of what separates us additionally from other machine shops. The previous one being that we have our own core product. So we have parts where we're approved by the FAA as the sole person approved by the FAA to manufacture those parts. We also have a complex assembly department that, does an excellent job of assembling parts that — generally people that are very good machinist aren't sometimes the people you want assembling things that are very precise and tedious. So yeah, we have a great team back here that is about half of our direct labor split between our machine shop and assembly.

This is an example of one of our clamps. So that's what it goes to the back of the cockpit. And what Jeri is doing is she's part marking it. So we have two Keyence inkjet printers and then an  inkjet printer.The reason for the two is that, the Boeing spec and what other likes the ink that is almost proprietary to Imaje.

And then we use, we kind of have our own workforce development program. So we start recruiting sophomores in high school that go through, like, a two-year apprenticeship program here. And then, if we're hiring at the time, sometimes we’ll fund their education and then they come back here and work after they graduate from trade school.

If we go back here, this is where our case assembly is. So this is where they're either soldering or epoxying cases to the glass. A big pain point of the process is just the cleaning of the glass. But everything is very tedious. This is an example of one of the bezels that gets affixed to the case.

Today I think this is a lot lower production machine shop than what we generally have. But we don't typically have that, “everybody's stressed,” but it's just kind of like, you know, it’s what’s expected to get the stuff done and it's kind of a lot less stressful than it used to be. So that's one nice part about, CAM Assist, ProShop and some of the other like processes we've implemented. It just — it makes our flow so much smoother.

I'm not saying that on-time delivery is not crucial, but I was like, the last thing I want to do is rush a part to get it to the customer on time and have it be bad. I think if a customer is willing one way, it's like, “make sure it's a high-quality part.” Now we try to do it both or it's high-quality part on time, if not early and with great customer service. And I think if you can do those three things, you don't really even need to invest in marketing because your customers will just come back with more.

And then back in here too, we have a big kind of paint booth. We sold it off about four years ago, but we used to have a construction and manufacturing equipment company, so they made, like, big roadside ditchers and whatnot. So we made a paint booth for that. I think you can fit a car in there if you really wanted to.

But so many of our our parts require paint now, and that's almost become our biggest backlog is, you know, a lot of these Boeing spec paints and all of our case assemblies get painted. A lot of our defense parts are now getting painted.

So that's where we tried to market. It's like, we can provide, paint, second-ops.

We can supply chemical finishing through our supply chain, and then paint at the end of it and/or assembly. So we've tried to market like instead of managing five vendors, now you only have to manage one. And that's where we've seen a lot of growth in our defense company is like, oh, I just have to cut one PO and just keep asking those guys where it's at, instead of following every part of the supply chain.

So this is our, quality department. That's where we receive in, our material. We do our first-piece inspections, as well as incoming and outgoing inspections for outside processing. But it's kind of central to our company because, all parts run in and out of here so frequently.

So we have, four individuals that support our quality department. And then, we're looking at it adding additional equipment that will be here in the first quarter to scale up our quality department to match the capabilities that our machine shop currently has.

Evan: Sure. So what are some of the kinds of equipment that you’ve got here?

Johnny: So we have, we have a Faro Arm, which Luke is currently using to measure that larger part there. We also have a Keyence image scanner as well. And then we have a comparator and then, a manual CMM that's back in that room. And then we're looking at adding a Hexagon CMM here in the first quarter as well.

Yeah, this is probably our most precise, but it's also a super small footprint.

And, it works better with things that are shorter Z-height. So, we do a lot of these bands for our clamps that are almost two-dimensional parts, and you have a small Z-height, but, we do thousands of them, so it's nice to bring them in here, you know, every couple hundred to just make sure that we're not floating one way or another with the tolerances.

Evan: Are there any particular jobs, even vaguely speaking, that would do require the, the expansion to the quality department?

Johnny: I think it's more of tackling a volume problem than the measuring. Now, a lot of our work isn't even to the tenths usually. It's like one thou, half a thou, so we haven't ever had to measure those. But my thought is like, once you have it, then you can open up the ability to, to quote and then maybe machine it.

Evan: So having that kind of extreme ability to do that.

Johnny: Yeah. So it's kind of we've upped our capabilities in the machine shop and we haven't really done an equal part in quality. So kind of bring quality up. And then after I do that I can increase the capabilities of the machine shop. And I keep like going back and forth.

Brent Donaldson (Editor-in-Chief, 91ÊÓƵÍøÕ¾ÎÛ): Hey everybody, Brent Donaldson with 91ÊÓƵÍøÕ¾ÎÛ here. And if you just watch that video and you're thinking, “Boy, I'd like my shop to be featured in The View From My Shop series,” then just send us an email at shopvideo@mmsonline.com and tell us what sets your shop apart.