Royal Master Grinders

On Sunday I arrived at the beginning of my journey to Asia: Newark Airport. With a sigh I got off the monorail at Terminal A, rather than my usual stop at Terminal C. This was only because the usual direct flight that I take was all booked and so our illustrious Lori got me on a partner airline, United. The only issue was instead of a direct flight, I had to connect through ORD (O Hare). This added another 3 hours to the travel time, but with 13 hours vs 16 hours, at that point you’re numb and hungry anyway. While sitting in the lounge (a perk of the Continental / United merger) an announcement began saying my EWR to ORD flight was cancelled. Looking at the time, I started to formulate a Plan B.

I walk up to the counter at the lounge, and politely say I really need to get to Asia but my flight is cancelled, and the next EWR to ORD will not get me to Chicago in time for my connection, what now?

A few clicks and a few squints at her screen, and she produces a boarding pass that is famous in Royal Master Circles – “The Express”. This was my original preference before I was booked on United, but the cost was insane.  As soon as I figure out what happened and realize that I was treated to a direct flight, my phone beeps and buzzes stating that my new gate of departure is 121 in Terminal C. Continental instantly sent me an update to my status of my gate and departure time.

Frequent flyers have all experienced this instant information but in the information age what made this cool is with a simple Mobile phone number or e-mail address, all of this is instant. Back when instant coffee was an innovation, it was coffee made fast, but now it takes too long for water to boil on a stove. So we look for faster ways to get hot water. 

Instant information is key to running high volume production.  Every minute of lost production means lost profits.  Royal Master has now incorporated in their machines the ability for the machine to e-mail up to 10 addresses or send out text messages to mobile phones numbers when a machine issue occurs or even just update production figures. Using your iPhone or Blackberry you can log into the machine for instant updates or even change part numbers. All of this information is available and to take advantage of it is easy.

I decided to blog about this because one customer I just left was so thrilled with this concept that as part of his machine purchase, he asked us to include an iPhone as part of the deal, all loaded and set-up for this feature. He stated that his boss would never believe him, so he figured he would show it to him when the machine arrived.

If your machine could talk, what would it want to tell you? Let us know your thoughts.

 Vacation is upon us and after this week Royal Master shuts down manufacturing for two weeks. You can still call and get parts and if I never told you that we were shut down you probably would never have known. Lori stills answers the phone and we all answer our  e-mails as if it was business as usual. On Friday our shipping manager Glen pointed out that we only had 21 working days before we ship IMTS when we get back from vacation. Maybe he was hinting to leave him a long list of things to do while he worked over shut down, or looking for me to say “ that’s plenty of time “.

With 21 days left there is a whole lot to do, but we are in pretty good shape. Skids are built according to the jigsaw puzzle that we call a truck layout, machines are all on line and most are finished. We are just waiting on some feeding components from vendors.

The truck layout is one of the most fun things associated with the planning of the show. It has been called fitting 10 pounds of  “candy” in a 5 pound bag . Trucking is expensive and a source of stress. Having everything out of our control after pain staking working on the machines for 3 months is a minor part of the stress, but then when you think about it, a stranger taking over 2 million dollars of equipment hurdling down Route 80 at 70 mph can give anyone a chance to pause for more than a second.

Setting up the layout for the truck is like a jigsaw puzzle, everything fits, and has a place. Put it in the wrong place and you have a bad case of the head scratches while you figure it out.  Fitting 7 machines, a tradeshow display, support materials for a weeks in a 8’ x 48’ space is  just plain old fun. We actually build the skids to fit the truck dimensions to minimize any empty voids. The record for empty space was in 2006 with a whopping 6” of empty room at the back of the truck. I will admit that we tape out the truck in the parking lot the day before to make sure all 33,000 pounds fit in all 384 square feet of truck deck.

Our overseas agent recently sent us an inquiry to grind parts for an experimental grind. His only details that he gave is that they are very small and they might be hard to handle. In working with guidewires which go as small as .001” in diameter, I thought, “ no challenge here”.

Wow was I wrong. Not only are these parts small in diameter, but short in length. The 1000 parts that they sent in are shown here. The handling of the part, not the grinding will be the challenge. This is a patience job, and a job that even our competitors will say, “just call Royal Master”

In replying back to our overseas agent, he gave me an “oh by the way” with the customer wants to autofeed them. In the back of my mind I assumed that this would have to be the case as I cannot see anyone on a production basis handling these parts, but I also kind of hoped that they had a plan already in place for inserting and removing from the wheels.

I will keep you posted as to the progress as we grind them in our Experimental lab. If you have a part that is more of a challenge, give it to us and you can win a $100 Best Buy Gift certificate. Closing date for Entries is August 15^th.

I look forward to your tough job, what would challenge us?

Everybody is busy.  Nobody has enough time to do what has to get done.  I can’t wait that long.  These are just the realities of business as usual today. 

The world we live in has changed.  The business environment has become so fast paced as a result of having to do more with fewer people.  Even going to a trade show is now a time critical event.  People used to walk the aisles of a show to see what is new.  Today, more people are pre-planning their visit and accomplishing more purposeful results.

Imagine if you, as busy as you are, as important as your project is, would walk into a meeting and everyone you needed to see was there waiting for you.  How convenient would it be to have a knowledgeable Applications Engineer, Mechanical Design Engineer, Software Design and Programming Engineer all waiting for you and your project?  More than this, there is an actual grinder on the floor under power making parts similar to what you have in mind.  When this team has listened to you and now completely understands what you want, they bring you to a design computer station and demonstrate a 3-D Model of the grinder including automation to solve your problem!

Royal Master Grinders is welcoming you to pre-plan your visit to our Booth #6646 at IMTS 2010.  You probably have just a few days at the show at most.  If you had to wait at each booth of interest to you to speak with someone other than a hired show host, you wouldn’t accomplish enough to make the trip worthwhile.  At the Royal Master Booth, we will “talk the talk” and “walk the walk”.

Schedule 15 minutes, 30 minutes or even 2 hours with us.  Whatever time it takes to get your point across and get the answers you need.  We are going to listen and understand what it is you want or need.

This is your chance to avoid the “Oh, he just went to lunch” or “He’s involved with other customers right now”.  Schedule your appointment and be part of the “Right Here, Right Now” attitude of tradeshows!

Contact us by telephone (201-337-8500) or e-mail (check our website for addresses www.royalmaster.com) and let us know when you will be available.  We will be glad to block off a time for you.

Bob Hoffman

When I started at Royal Master in January, I was extremely nervous. I had never had a job before, and I was intimidated by horror stories that my friends had told about their own jobs. Since we are still in high school, most of my friends work at places like the grocery store or the bagel shop. Working at an office was a total mystery to me.

My first week passed quickly. I met so many new people and tried my best to remember the names and faces. I started filing and making new folders. I had so many questions but everyone was so nice and answered them all. I started learning what I needed to do, and every day that I was there I became less nervous.

Now, three days a week at three, I walk into the office, say hello to Lori, Lee and Marilyn, before heading over to Alan’s desk. Alan will tell me what I should do that day. Sometimes, I will file downstairs, other times upstairs, where I file old purchase orders. I’ve also learned how to answer the phones. Occasionally, John Jr. will have a project for me, one that will, as he says “keep me out of trouble for a while”. Those projects range from figuring out how to put pictures on the blog to setting up email distribution lists.

Some of the things I have done at Royal Master have even helped me out at school. For my computer class, we had a project in which we need to design envelopes and labels. I was ahead of the class since Lori had already taught me how to make labels for the folders.

The people are what make my job here so interesting and fun. My friends have told me how some of the people they work with are cranky or mean. That is not the case at Royal Master. The people here are so nice. For example, Lori wrote up a whole page of directions about answering the phone, like who is in what department so that I can direct the call to the proper person.

Working at Royal Master is not at all what I expected. . Though I was nervous at first, I am now so glad that I work here.

Brianne Hostutler

Tomorrow we build a tradeshow booth. Why you ask?

Around 5 IMTS cycles ago ( 10 Years ) Royal Master Grinders would rent a booth for IMTS. I would fly to Chicago and look at 3-4 tradeshow display companies, have a few free lunches, make polite small talk as they try to get me to spend $15,000.00 for a 40’ rental wall. Mind you this does not include graphics, and usually is an Octonorm product. Octonorm is a plain white paneled product with an aluminum extrusion uprights, nothing fancy or nothing interesting, just a wall which at the end of the day is pretty ugly.

I finally had enough.

I decided that we would build our own backwall, make it custom and look neat. With all the grand ideas we had, I still had never built a booth, nor had any idea where to start. So I shopped around. I looked at booths at other tradeshows and decided a wooden booth with laminate on the outside would be good, Tan would be the color for a neutral background and graphics would be reusable.

I made a shopping list for the lumber yard, and the Formica dealer and off I went, filled up my pickup truck and arrived with my sketches for a Saturday build. Glen our shipping manager offered

to help and off we went into the unknown, we built walls, labeled them, laminated them, preassembled and fixed any issues then assembled them for the final time. I have to be honest it did not look too terrible. After I totaled up my receipts it really looked a lot better, total expenditures WITH graphics was less than $4,500.00.

We used that booth for 4 cycles for a total “Rental” of $1,125.00. I think that this is pretty cool that we saved over $55,500.00 for a wall that you would rent and give back 8 days later.

Why am I blogging about this now?? Its time for a new one. It is time to change colors, and modify the design as we are using this style for other shows now also. Since our first version of the booth we learned about milled pine lumber, Southco Fasteners which are a cam locking system, and a whole bunch of techniques for laminating  the panels. With any luck this version of the booth will look great and NOT be the focus of the booth as we will have lots of cool machines there doing neat things, but when people always say that “ your booth looks great “ I can then fondly remember being covered in laminate dust, and having liquid nails all over my hands.

This week I went to the local Westfield Shopping mall to return a pair of shoes that I purchased about 4 months ago. They are nothing special and not expensive, but I wear them most days and they look the part, but far from worn out. The reason for the return is the rubber soles split across the ball of the foot and I was annoyed that this could happen. I am not a return kind of person, I dislike the whole experience that it entails, finding a receipt that you put in a drawer six months ago and trudging to an overcrowded mall. Nasty salespeople are more interested in flirting with the kiosk employee across the mall, and not trying to help you. So what makes this experience noteworthy. I was in and out in less then 3 minutes flat.

Without a receipt I walked into the store, pulled out a shoe from the bag I brought, politely said “ is this supposed to happen?”, the answer was no from the very polite sales employee. He quickly offered that even though he did not have them in stock, he would order then and have them shipped to my home at no extra charge.  After filling out my name and address, I was on my way explaining my 7 year old daughter the difference between   good service like this and poor service like we had at chain store a few weeks back. Her simple reply was why would someone NOT give good service, and Daddy can we get a Pretzel.

I had to think about her question and I did not have an answer, as we went and got a Pretzel, Cold Stone Creamery for me.

We all live in a environment where  we are genuinely surprised by a thank you when you pay for your bagel and coffee or surprised when you get a small bag of peanuts on your cross country flight.  How did it get this far, I do not know but when this happened it made me sit back and just listen to Alan Schell our customer service person.  Everyday I hear him on the phone as we sit close to each other, but I just decided to listen, and listen intently.

Alan has a conversation with our customers, he just does not take an order. At times it seems like they should be making plans for a weekend picnic at his home. One instance came to light yesterday that made me talk about it here.

A very good customer called us yesterday afternoon inquiring about delivery of some spare parts that he needed to order and needed quickly. It turns out his customer needed additional parts from him, creating panic  down the food chain. He turned to us.

He needed many specialty work rest blades and an propionate amount of a special type of sliced regulating wheels and quick, by the end of the week, and we needed to deliver. Alan asked him if he could put him on hold for a minute to find out what we can do. Before he put him on hold they shared a good laugh. Within a minute Alan returned and triumphantly and told our customer that everything he needed would ship by Friday and if we needed to we will ship out the remainder on Saturday for him.

Signaling that the answer was satisfactory, they continued on their conversation about weekend plans, soccer games and Alan’s new weed whacker which was much better than an old electric one he had.

Customer service is a really important part of our business, We are a family business, with employees that have been here for 20 plus years. We all take pride in what happens between these four walls, and it starts with a Friendly greeting from Lori when she answers the phone to Alan’s genuine Thank you for your order. It is not a rehearsed thank you, but when I really listened to Alan’s Thank you for your order, he really means it.

Today our granite machine bed was delivered for our centerpiece machine at IMTS. About 5 months ago we looked into the possibility of enhancing our machine as we started running into applications that required better tolerances. Two areas to address were thermal stability and vibration dampening. ( Hey every micron counts ). The granite machine bed was born.

Friday afternoons at Royal Master are funny, they either feature pure chaos as people call in last minute for parts or they are quiet, with the only calls from spouses looking for a choice between pizza or Chinese for dinner. There never seems to be anything in-between.

With the bed came a bunch of new ideas of the machine, many which without a doubt enhance the mechanical properties of the machine, but some are purely ascetic in nature. Meetings on the machine came at different times, nothing planned, usually a cup of coffee or Mountain Dew was in hand and it started out with a “What if we…. ” And ended with, lets get Todd to figure this out, it sounds good.

This bed has been highly anticipated here for the last 10 weeks as Rock of Ages in Vermont helped us develop a product that could be manufactured, but also meet our requirements. The result arrived today. When the truck arrived there was crowd, all eagerly anticipating the bedrock machined base, which arrived crated. But when uncrated, many just “Wow”

As many times as you look at a solidworks model, and visualize the end result, nothing prepared me for the relief to see the idea which started out as a “ what if” get uncrated. Looking at the certification paperwork that came with it, revealed another surprise. Just like a Born On date. Rock Of Ages who knew of our excitement to receive this, included a few photos of it in process. I have to say they got copied many times and passed around as everyone had to look at them, a lot.

After I finish writing this blog, I am out to the shop to go place a headstock, wheel guard and some other items which are finished on top of the machine to see what it looks like, unless someone beats me to it.

John Jr

Johnjr@royalmaster.com

September 13-18, 2010 and in case your next question is where is Royal Master’s booth? Back in our same location of 6646. we are recognizable by the absence of standard carpet on the floor and 7 centerless grinders  running continuous production on various applications. Since Early March we have begun to work on the specifics of this show in an effort to showcase what Royal Master does well.

We Centerless Grind Parts from .001” in Diameter to 1.5” in Diameter really accurately.

All of the other accessories at the show that we will be demonstrating will be all really cool things to help you to achieve the results of grinding your parts, really accurately.  When we plan the booth and its logistics we look at our customers and future customers and hold the firm belief that your time is valuable and going to a show is not an excuse for a steak and a beer anymore. It is mission to find answers to questions and solutions to problems. We are ready for you!

Explore this web site dedicated to IMTS 2010 and Royal Master’s efforts to deliver a complete experience to you the attendee. We look forward to your conversations with us before the show, on this web site, during the show in Chicago, and after the show to follow-up everything.

We invite you to join along in this unique blog. During the course of the next 5 months you will get an inside look at Royal Master and the show. What it takes to make the whole thing work and happen. And along the way have some fun. I would also like some feedback. Send me an e-mail if you have a question, or idea on what you want to see at out booth or something that you really feel is lacking in a tradeshow booth that has not be addressed. Now is your chance to be a part of the program so you can get answers to questions and solutions to problems.