ProCAM Services uses a variety of CNC milling, turning, and routing machines to produce machined parts for numerous industries. (Photo courtesy ProCAM Services)
For ProCAM Services, its family-type culture is a big plus when customers need parts fast.
By Mark Shortt
ProCAM Services LLC, a CNC machine shop in Zeeland, Michigan, provides job shop machining services to any industry that requires machined parts, from automation to aerospace to manufacturing equipment used in the food industry. Because every job is different, the ProCAM team tailors its services to satisfy each customer’s unique needs.
“We machine various types of parts that require milling, turning, and routing,” wrote Tom Bassett II, the company’s owner, in an emailed response to Design-2-Part. “We’ve machined parts with tolerances as tight as +0/-.0002.”
What really sets ProCAM Services apart from other machine shops, Bassett said, are the short lead times that its team achieves without sacrificing part quality. Manufacturing technology plays a key role here, but it’s not the whole story.
“It’s about the culture in our shop and our processes,” Bassett told D2P. “By processes, I mean everything from quoting to shipping. It’s about how a job travels through our shop, not just the machining process.”
If you ask most successful shops how they’re able to provide short lead times, Bassett said, they’ll tell you it’s their employees that make the difference. But at ProCAM, it goes beyond that to the culture that creates the team. It starts with the company’s owners, Bassett and his wife Malinda, who prefer to think of the company’s 27 team members as co-workers, rather than employees.
“If you don’t care about your co-workers, why would they care about the company?” Bassett asked. “I like everyone I work with, and I like joking around with them and talking to them about things outside of work and helping them whenever I can if they need it. We’re all family here.”
Bassett said that at ProCAM Services, team members know what they need to do, and they help each other out when needed. It wasn’t always like that when the company would hire the people “with the best qualifications.”
“Most of those people are gone now,” he said. “Since the focus has been on the culture, things have become so less stressful, and jobs seem to flow through the shop so much faster and smoother. Instead of having to constantly fight to steer the bus, it’s like it’s on auto pilot and only requires gentle course corrections.”
Design-2-Part spoke with Tom Bassett recently about ProCAM’s capabilities and how its unique culture supports its team’s ability to achieve short lead times and tailored solutions to customers’ needs. A transcript of our conversation follows, edited for length and clarity.
Design-2-Part: ProCAM Services offers milling, turning, lathe work, and routing. From a technical standpoint, what are some of the advantages that your processes—including the multi-axis machines—offer?
Tom Bassett: One of the things that sets us apart is that we have a wide range of mills and lathes with different capabilities—that gives us a wide range of parts that we can machine, that other shops can’t necessarily machine. Because of the different types of equipment that we have, we also have more flexibility.
I always keep that in mind when it comes time to buy another machine. The question is not only ‘Will it fill the need that I have at the time?’ It’s also ‘What other capabilities will it give us?
D2P: I understand you have 3-axis, 4-axis, and 5-axis machines, and you recently bought a lathe that offers 6-axis capability. As you go from 3-axis on up, what are the advantages that you gain at those higher levels of capability?
TB: Fewer setups. Having these machines—the 6-axis lathe in particular—also allows us to machine some parts that maybe we couldn’t have machined before. There are parts that need to have side holes at 45 degrees. Before, we would have to turn them on the lathe, and then put them on the 4th axis to add in the holes. Now, we can just do that all on one setup.
The other area where it helps is, sometimes you have a feature—say, a flat on the side of a round part that’s in relation to another feature on that part—let’s say a drilled hole or another flat. It makes it easier that you can do that all on one machine.
D2P: It sounds like that would help reduce your turnaround times, too.
TB: Exactly.
D2P: I know that’s one of the big benefits that you offer—shorter lead times without sacrificing quality.
TB: Right. The short lead times: That’s really one of our big specialties. And it’s not only because of the machinery we have, it’s also the team that we have, and the processes that we have in place. We quote a job, and if it comes, we get a PO for it, and it becomes a job. It splinters off into different directions, and then realigns when it hits the machines. With the group of people that we have here, everybody knows what they need to do. And they’re not only doing what they need to do, but they’re also looking out for the next step and trying to help the next person out.
One customer sent us a package of parts, and there were maybe 20 or 30 parts. They said they want them within a week, with anodize. He said, ‘Let me know how many you can take, and I’ll send out the rest.’
We’re their first choice, preferred shop. I said I’ll take them all. Most of them are already off the machine. We basically quoted it Thursday night and today’s Monday, and I would say probably 80 percent of them are done. What’s left will be done by morning, and they’ll be out to anodize tomorrow.
We work with outside vendors for anodizing. They know how fast we want our parts turned around and they handle that for us. Because of our speed and timing, we’ve actually increased their speed and timing.
D2P: You mentioned that the culture of your shop is very important to having these shorter lead times. How would you describe ProCAM’s culture?
TB: I think this is one of the few shops where everybody who works here actually cares about the company. Nobody looks at this as being a job. Because my thinking is that we all have to work for a living, so we might as well enjoy where we’re working. Everybody here gets along together really well. Some of the guys get together and do things outside of work together. I’ve worked in some other shops years ago, and there’s always people who others want to stay away from. We don’t have any of those guys here. It’s by design.
I would say it’s like a giant group of friends working together, and it makes it so much easier when you want to implement a new process. We’ll go out to the machinist and say, ‘Hey, we want to try doing this now, and maybe it’ll save us on some setup time.’ And everybody’s willing to try it.
We’ve had guys in the past who would fight you, and say, “That’s the way I’ve been doing it for the past 30 years.’ But if you don’t progress and move forward, you’re going to get left behind. But with the group of guys that we have here and the culture of always, constantly innovating and looking for the better way, when you bring something up, it’s well received. And even though they may be skeptical about it, they’re going to give it 100 percent because they know that although this might not be beneficial, it could lead to something that is.
ProCAM encourages a culture where, according to owner Tom Bassett, workers enjoy working with and helping each other. (Photo courtesy ProCAM Services)
D2P: Given that you emphasize the team’s culture, what are some of the things that you look for in a person when they’re applying for a job at ProCAM?
TB: The number one thing is personality. We could teach you pretty much anything that we need you to do, but the number one thing is personality. I want to get to know the person as best I can in that interview, to see what type of person they are, and if they’re going to be a good fit.
I’ve learned over the years that you don’t hire just because you need a body. We’ve got a lot of guys that started out in the shipping department because a lot of people don’t even know our trade exists. And we’ve found that there are a lot of good machinists who didn’t know that they were machinists, or capable of it.
We’ve hired them into the shipping department, and if they’re really doing well and another position opens up, we do a lot of promoting within. If the guy in the tooling crib is doing really well, we’ll move him from the tool crib to a machine and move the shipping guy to the tooling crib. That gets him familiar with all the tools and starts getting him familiar with the processes that we do.
If we see that he’s starting to pick that up and is doing really well, we’ll put him on the machine, where we have what we call ‘load and go’s,’ which is basically like a small production run. We’ll put him on that machine, see how they do, and then if they do well there, then the next time there’s an opening for a machinist, we’ll start the process over again, bringing somebody into the shipping department and moving them through the shop.
D2P: Your website states that ProCAM is committed to providing each customer with a tailored solution, and you recognize that each customer has unique needs. What is the key that allows you to provide a tailored, or custom, solution to your customers’ unique needs?
TB: It comes back to the culture and the guys that we have here. Because we are a job shop, and have been since we started machining, we recognize that every customer wants something different. So, once we recognize what they’re looking for, we just change our processes. Our processes are flexible enough that we provide them with what they’re looking for.
We have customers that we do these giant aluminum plates for that are, like, 48 by 96, and they don’t want Scotch Brite. They also want the parts anodized. And we’ve got some customers that don’t want the pieces milled on the end—they just want the saw cut.
D2P: How does your team’s knowledge of different materials, including some that might be difficult to machine, like Inconel, help your customers?
TB: It allows us to do more things for them. One of our aerospace companies sends us 3D printed Inconel parts. When we first started doing them, there was a learning curve. One of the things that helps us is that the people who work here look at it as a challenge and accept it as a challenge, and they don’t get frustrated when things go wrong. It’s like, ‘Hey, how do we process this part so that it goes through the shop smoothly?
Then, when it hits the machine, and we’re running into a problem, the guys will get together and say, ‘What do we want to do here?’ And we change the process, and we learn a lot. Pretty much every day, you learn something, and you take that knowledge and apply it to the next job.
By doing some of the tougher materials, like the Inconel, it makes doing the other stuff easier.
We do enough stainless steel that we know what parts are going to warp during machining, which ones aren’t, and what we’ve got to do to prevent it from happening. Doing all these different materials keeps you on your toes. It’s never boring, and it just increases your knowledge of the machining process.
D2P: You also mentioned that your business is dedicated to going the extra mile for customers.
TB: We’ve done some crazy stuff. We had a customer a few years ago, in North Carolina, that needed their parts fast. We machined the parts that day, and my wife and I drove all night and delivered them in the morning. We’ve had quite a few customers that we’ve helped out of jams, doing similar things.
When that comes across our plate, we don’t go, ‘Oh, that’s impossible, that can’t be done in that amount of time. We look at it as, ‘How can we make this happen?’
D2P: You mentioned the Haas DS-30Y lathe that you recently acquired, which gives you 6-axis and live tooling. What are some of the other benefits that the machine offers through those capabilities?
TB: It adds more precision for us, and it gives us more capabilities for what we can machine. We had a customer that needed a square shaft. We couldn’t fit that size square through our spindle bore, but with that lathe, we could turn the ends round, and then make the center area square. So, we machined it square.
On the first setup on the main spindle, when you’re turning the outside diameters of the part and when you have the sub-spindle come in and grab it, you’re getting a more precise grab from the sub-spindle than you would if you took the part out of the machine and then put it back in the spindle. So, it gives you more accurate transfer.
D2P: You also recently launched your own scheduling software that has helped reduce lead times. How does it help to do that?
TB: I don’t want to give away too much about that, other than it’s an automated system, and it’s been a very big investment for the company, but it’s paying off. Our on-time record is crazy good, compared to what it was before. There always seemed to be some jobs that fell through the cracks, and then, by the time you realized it, it was too late to get it done in time. But with this automated system, it’s right there for everybody in the shop to see.