The Datanomix Make More Tour Stops at Ricaurte Precision, Inc. 

Brings Together Leaders of Southern California Manufacturing Facilities to Share Insights, Innovations, and Challenges

Leadership from Southern California manufacturing facilities came to Ricaurte Precision in Santa Ana, California to network, learn, and share insights with their peers. Hernan Ricaurte, Owner, and Randal Leach, Production Manager, led a facility tour that highlighted the investments Ricaurte has made in automation, digital transformation, and building a culture of efficiency. These are topics Hernan is very passionate about because he credits them with keeping his facility competitive in a very competitive market. 

One of the most important elements of Ricaurte Precision’s culture of efficiency is their morning Gemba walk, where they visit every machine to make sure each job is ready to run, and they review performance data to make course corrections if things are not on track. Randall gave a live demo of how he uses Fast Track during those Gemba walks as a one-stop-shop to understand if a job is performing to standard. He demonstrated how they use joint problem-solving with the operator to get jobs back on track if they are behind.

During the tour, Hernan shared how gathering data from critical assets is a requirement for continuous improvement, and a cheat code for overcoming skilled labor challenges: “If I could hire an engineer on every machine I would. There is plenty to improve, and we all know that. Instead, I have Datanomix because I need more eyes and ears that can tell us what’s really going on and how we can get better.” Seeing Datanomix as an “employee” that is providing clarity on where to focus attention and amplify people’s abilities to make improvements was a major discussion point for the group.

Talking about Tools and Tool Life

Another hot topic for the group was tool usage, tool life, and ways to cut tooling costs. Everyone felt there were plenty of opportunities to slash costs, but struggled to identify them. Andrew Lusty, Senior Account Manager, showed the group how Production Monitoring identifies opportunities by highlighting when operators were changing tools too early or too late, what tool life they were really achieving on key jobs, and how to use that tooling data in more advanced applications to predict how the tool life should really be programmed.

Roundtable Highlights

After the tour, the group gathered for a roundtable that hit on a wide range of topics from labor challenges to ERP best practices. Key topics included:

• Labor Challenges and Interviewing Practices: People shared their tips for ensuring a cultural fit in the hiring process. Hernan talked about how important emphasizing expectations and accountability in the hiring process and as part of the company’s culture. He believes a big part of his role is making sure that people have the best tools and information they need to do their jobs. 
• ERP Best Practices: The conversation touched on the strengths and weaknesses of ERP systems, especially around accuracy. This led to how the integration with Datanomix brought a new level of accuracy to job costing and quoting by using the actual production data, rather than an estimate with a fudge factor on top. 
• Setting Employee Expectations: Hernan talked about how expectations for the day are set every day during a morning Gemba walk, which includes uptime goals. Having real-time feedback from Datanomix has really empowered his people to intervene as soon as problems start, which has really improved their overall productivity.
• Start Small, Learn Fast, and GROW: Ricaurte shared how they started using Datanomix on just one machine with mobile notifications. When they saw the ROI, they expanded to include more machines and now track setups, true uptime, part cycle times, and more. 

Wrap Up

One of the biggest takeaways of the group was just how much Datanomix knows about production. One of the quotes from the tour was, “holy shit, you can see that?” Yes, yes you can. Several questions then centered around “well how hard is it to get that information?” Hernan blew the crowd away when he said “guys, I’m not exaggerating, with Datanomix, you just plug it in, you don’t do anything. It just figures everything out.”

The Make More Tour 

The first stop on the Datanomix Make More Tour was a huge success. There was plenty of sunshine, good food, great company, and even an ice cream truck. The Crew from Datanomix is very grateful to Hernan, Randal, and all the attendees for taking time out of their busy schedules to network and share their insights around the challenges facing manufacturers today.  

Visit Us at IMTS in Chicago!

We’d love to hear about the challenges you face as a manufacturer – Visit the Datanomix Booth #135636 at IMTS 2024 on September 9 – 14, 2024, at McCormick Place, Chicago, IL USA.

Learn More About Ricaurte Precision

If you want to hear more insights from Hernan Ricaurte, who is also the current President of the Southern California NTMA chapter, listen to his Manufacturing Maverick Podcast episode. You can also watch Hernan’s and Randal’s interview with MTDCNC’s Tony Gunn. 

Original source Datanomix