Royal Master Grinders

Royal Master is closing out 2011 as our best year ever. We had many great projects for both the medical and non-medical industry as well as being introduced to a few new industries. We want to thanks all of our customers who have made this possible and we look forward to another productive year in 2012.

Starting out 2012 we have plenty to do. We start off with the receipt of a new Horizontal machining center. We retired our old Giddings and Lewis Orion and purchased a new Mazak Nexus 6800 with a 12 pallet system and 160 tool changer. We will be receiving this machine in February. To get prepared for it we are having a blast cutting concrete, as well as John Sr digging out the foundation for it. In another week or so we will be pouring the foundation.

We also have the MDM West show in California where we will be introducing new features to all of our existing products that we will be displaying. We will Have the Gen X machine, NEW Laser Gauge system, Enhanced Servo Cycle System, and our Spool to Spool system. All will be grinding product and will be available for personal demonstrations prior to the show’s opening every day

After MDM West we will be gearing up for IMTS in Chicago. We will have our same booth location with plenty of really neat new products and new accessories. We will be discussing this more in detail as the time gets closer.

Once again, thank you for your business and feel free to call or e-mail us anytime. 201-337-8500 or johnjr@royalmaster.com

Customer service is one of the things within a company that everyone says to do well. You see television advertisements  about how your local car dealership has an internet lounge while you impatiently wait for your car to be serviced or the plumber who boasts “30 minute response time”- with the exception of mealtimes, nap time and overnight. Recently the phone company was challenged by the cable company to deliver phone service to homes in our area. In my own house, the phone went out about a month ago. We called the phone company, to fix it and were put on hold for an hour. We finally got someone who then told us it will be three days until they can fix it and the only time they can be at our house is between 9 and 2. We said, “Are you kidding me?” We basically gave up. We switched to the cable company and saved $70.00 a month and are happy.

Last evening my daughter and I went to the local mall to get her snow boots because last year’s boots instantly were too small for her 8 year old feet. We went to the mall on a quiet evening so that we could go into a store and be the only shoppers. However, we found that we had to constantly battle for attention with the clerk’s phone as he or she texted away. Eventually, we just walked out without buying the boots. My daughter was as equally annoyed as me because she liked the boots. I was annoyed because I just really do not like to shop.

We ended up at a Sports Authority sports store where we got our boots and went to pay. At the register we noticed that on the bottom of our receipt, if we filled out a survey and gave the store a “Very good” for customer service, we would receive a $10.00 coupon. Enough Said.

I got an e-mail from one of our top 5 customers last night and it was stated in plain language:

“You are correct – the last few weeks we have received in many ******* along with the remaining ******.  I appreciate everyone at Royal Master working so diligently to get these out to us.  Also, Alan has been doing an excellent job in going above and beyond in checking out the delivery schedules and expediting items in for us when we are in a desperate need for something.   We do appreciate it!Thanks again & have a great weekend!”

Where does a consumer go to when they are dissatisfied? There is no undercover boss going to magically appear and fix everything. Does the consumer accept it as the way the company does business or would they like to know what is wrong so they can fix it? Where do you go? The phone company does not advertise a “If you are dissatisfied with us talk to the CEO” phone number. The store with the texting clerk is earning a paycheck, but the owner of the store does not know that I will never come back because of my experience. But I bet the owner would like to know that he lost a customer over a very fixable issue.

The point of this blog is not to get annoyed about the situation again, but to just say if you have a good experience at a store or a company they always like to hear about it. If it’s a bad experience the company wants to hear about it even more. Where do you go where someone will listen and care? That’s the key question.

John Jr

Johnjr@royalmaster.com

Vice President

Royal Master Grinders.

Almost everyone has an opinion of Newark Airport. Looking out the window on departure you see a lot of familiar sights: IKEA, the Jersey Turnpike, Refineries, an occasional Sopranos flashback, and lots and lots of white planes with blue tails. These planes are now marked UNITED. Scratching my head I had to look twice.

The merger of United and Continental has not just begun- it is in full swing. I travel in and out of EWR a lot. I actually have grown to like the place in an odd sort of way. It always means that I am off someplace to meet a customer or go to a show. I’m eager to meet someone I have talked with in the past or for the first time. Arriving means that home is about 90 minutes from touchdown.

When I saw the planes painted the familiar white and blue with the United name, I was disappointed and concerned. Spending about 100,000+ air miles per year in a continental plane has afforded me a consistency and level of service that I deem more than acceptable. The 16+ hours to Hong Kong always seem manageable with the smiles and hard work that the attendants put forth; which is contrasting to my experiences with United: the old planes and crabby attendants who make it a chore and frown if you ask for the can of soda during the beverage service.

I listened to Larry Kellner the CEO for years during his pre-recorded message about their quality service, newest jet fleet in the industry, etc… but the biggest test for this airline since its bankruptcy in the 1990’s is to maintain its consistency of reasonable service at a competitive rate while not falling prey to the perils of mergers gone bad. And for all of us frequent business travelers, do not forget to just give us the whole can of soda.

I have taken some photos and a video update from the show floor to give you a quick look at what is going on as we prepare for your arrival.

Our Truck Arrives Tuesday Morning at 6:30am

End of Day #1

Progress

00070 

Click on the above link for a video of the booth

Many of you have called and talked with or e-mailed Alan Schell who is our main customer service representative here at Royal Master.  We call him “world wide”  mainly because he interacts with many different companies around the world effortlessly. Alan’s lineage at Royal Master began over 20 years ago as our Crib manager, from there into purchasing, then to customer service. He always approached his job with a smile and enthusiasm.

Alan and I go way back to when I was in high school and college working for him in shipping and receiving. Him and Mr. Mc Cracken were a good team and still today we often tell stories about Mr. Mc Cracken’s booming voice and crushing handshake. When Alan came out to ask a question this morning about a shipment going to Japan, he was quick to point out that we should put a little more shrink wrap around this machine before it loaded onto the flatbed tomorrow.

The answer to his suggestion is shown below.

T- 21 hours to we load.

I do not think any explaination is needed. I think we had more fun with the Dry Ice when the camera was turned off.

Skidding machines, one of the most difficult jobs when it comes to IMTS. We call it packing ten pounds in a 5 pound bag. We have talked about in previous blog postings about the jigsaw puzzle that our truck is, but fitting everything on the skids is an art form. On the bigger projects like the bedrock we have the machine, JIC Cabinet and coolant filter. We fit all of that on a 64” x 96” skid. Nothing can hang off especially on the 96” dimension as it would hang off the side of the truck.

We keep all of our machines on the skids at the show. If you look at the show photos you will see that they are all on platforms, these are the skids, we pop off a tiled side and the forklift can just get under it and drive away. Easy. We do not need any spotting of machines which saves around $2500.00 in rigging costs on the inbound and outbound. It also saves a ton of time. The machines come off the truck, and get put right into the chalk line markings. Truck to booth and spotted, less than 5 minutes per machine

On Saturday we skidded all of our machines, plus packed a few other Miscellaneous Skids for Saturdays ship date. With the Help of 6 guys this is the equivalent of asking your buddies to help you move for the 12^th time in a year. Not a fun job, but it has to get done. During the course of the morning we found a few things:

• A misplaced cross beam means we get out the Herman Munster Homemade Sledge Hammer ( 4×4 Steel block Welded to a 4’ long pipe)  to put another cross beam into the skid.
• It is possible to get stuck under a skid trying to put a bolt in. I will forever think I was set-up for the photo that is shown here. They had to pull me out by the feet.
• Sometimes the best laid plans and autocad layouts just do not work out as originally planned.
• Bedrock + Coolant and Filter+ Electrical Cabinet = more that a 5,000 lift can handle. Solution: Machine bed counterweights. Number needed … 8 to keep the back wheels of the forklift on the ground.

By 1:00 we were all pooped and happy its finished.  Un-skidding them happens September 25^th come join the fun if you are in Jersey. Coffee and Bagels at 9:30

With two weeks to go before shipping a lot is going to happen. The basic plan in place for this week is to get all the machines finalized and running, then on Saturday everything is to be re-skidded onto their pallets. In our booth we leave the machines on their pallets and make them look nice. It is less expensive to do it that way and to be blunt no one really ever notices or says anything.

 I am fortunate that I am Involved in the Association for Manufacturing Technology. This trade association is not only instrumental in the production of IMTS, but they have an arm that looks out for Manufacturing’s best interests in Washington. Some of the Tax cuts that aided machine tool builders in the past 10 years were lobbied for  by this association.

 As part of AMT on Thursday I went to Chicago for a final meeting to review the show with 8 other exhibitors. We all have been around the trade show world for many years now and we range from large companies like Haas to companies like ourselves. Our goal is to give a voice to the exhibitors and help the direction of the show from a behind the scenes.  During our visit to GES we saw a lot of the ideas we discussed for two years come to life. It should be a really good show with can’t miss Keynote speakers, and a really cool Emerging Technology Pavilion. Lockheed Martin will have a Fighter Jet on the floor also in the West Building

 From concept to reality, we have been talking about the Bedrock series for a while now. This new machine platform besides being really cool looking offers a ton of advantages for production grinding. You can see that the machine is done and is getting tooled out for the show this week also. In about a week you can visit our web site booth6646.com for videos of all our machines in our booth.

 If you cannot come to IMTS 2010 this website will give you the same experience as if you were in Chicago . Once the machines are on site we will re-take the videos for all to see the parts grinding , and the booth up and running. Until then we will post videos of the machines completed on our  floor or similar machines. Check back after labor day for the full booth experience. 

 Wednesday of this week serves as our first customer demonstration for our NEW bedrock series of centerless grinders. One of the first blogs that was written included a photo of the machine’s bed being machined at Rock of Ages in Vermont. Now the design has come to life and is a machine tool that is grinding applications to under .000010” roundness.

 After our demonstration on Wednesday for a customer we will be starting to tool out the machine for IMTS. Outside of the machines new design, and superior accuracy we will have some other pretty cool  accessories on it.

•  New Magazine Feeder design that is easier to load parts into a hopper for longer unattended operation
•  In corporation with Laser Linc we will have integrated into the machine a new Lobex^TM Lobing Detection System. It  performs real-time analysis of centerless ground products to detect and report a constant diameter but out-of-round condition due to lobing of any frequency (e.g. 3, 5, 7, 9…).
•  A full machine enclosure that gives full access to the machine from any angle
•  New Software features for programming in virtual templates for CNC Dressing. This integrated system enables you to design your part or template on the machine’s interface. This tool also interfaces with  your engineering software to bring the solid model on-board to your centerless grinder. From there it generates the Excel worksheet which will either dress your wheel or grind your part without ever seeing a G or M code.

 We thought of everything, including a tool tray on an articulated arm that will keep your machine neat and clean, multiple language support, Internet connectivity for lights out grinding, and even a utility that can have the machine e-mail machine production statistics at a hourly frequency.

 All of this adds up to pretty cool new machine.