Paul:
Welcome, everybody. Excited to have you here for this first ever documentary watch party. There’s hearts flowing already. I got Kelly here on the team. Got Jereme. Jereme, thank you for being here.

Jereme :
Thanks for having me.

Paul:
Appreciate you, buddy. So as we’d like to start, as people are streaming in here, some housekeeping items. Start out with, please share in the chat where you are joining from. Love to see where people are coming in from. Actually I’m going to turn on my participants. Here we go. Undock that. Where did that just go? All right. All right. Oh, right in the middle. All right. Thank you, Eric for kicking us off in Colorado, and Bellingham, and Wisconsin and it’s going fast. Awesome. Texas, Orlando, Bonaire from KDS, near Cleveland, Sunnyvale, Canada. All right, Mukilteo, Indiana, Kennewick, Mount Vernon. Sean, Austin, Texas, California, Lake Stevens. All right, fantastic. We got a good audience here growing and people are streaming in. So yeah, this is the first time we’ve ever done this, so we’re playing it a bit by here, but hopefully we’re going to have some fun today.
So we’ll get to the agenda in a minute here. But as we go through this webinar, we’re going to see the video of TK Machine. We’re going to learn about Kelly’s process for getting superfast certifications. We’re going to watch another little video that we have about our QMS and ERP. We have a sneak peek at the end of a new project we are launching. Very excited to have Joseph from Novo Modo come join us for that in the last few minutes. If you have questions during any of this process, please put the questions in the Q&A. It’s much easier for us to track them that way, but by all means put any reactions or other comments in the chat. Love to have that just be super active and going. Thanks for kicking it all off with where everyone’s coming from, and let’s go ahead and get going. So Sarah, if you want to share your screen, we’ll get this kicked off here and have some fun today.
Okay. So we decided, when was it? It was more than a year ago now that we’re going to do this little project and Jereme had reached out to us to get his AS9100 and have us help him with that. And I decided to get on a call with him and asked him a little bit of the background, and from that conversation really spawned this whole project. We had a videographer, a friend of mine, James, who visited with me and traveled over to TK Machine a couple of times. He went more times than I did, but captured the process of this implementation. Some of it was Jereme and I talking on Zoom as the kickoff and the wrap-up.
But anyway, and then of course Kelly and Michael on our team came in, did the actual work with Jereme and his team and we documented the whole thing. So let’s go to the next slide. So we always like to start our webinars with a mission statement. We deliver powerful manufacturing software by deeply understanding our client’s challenges in order to meaningfully improve their businesses and in turn their communities. Hopefully today we’re going to show some real proof of that and I think it’s authentic that, Jereme, you feel like we’ve been a partner and help to you.

Jereme :
Oh, absolutely.

Paul:
Awesome. Got to put our money where our mouth is. And let’s go to the next slide. All right. So obviously you got me, we’ve got Kelly here, Jereme, and then again Joseph’s going to join us a little bit later. I also do want to acknowledge Michael Collins, who was featured in this for sure, but he’s now in our cybersecurity department doing really important work, and Kelly has been the one that’s sort of taken that torch from Michael and just been crushing it over the last year, year plus helping dozens of clients get certified. So we’ll learn more about her process later and let’s go to the next slide.
So yeah, here’s the agenda. We’re going to talk about a little bit of the history of the shop, do the documentary, do some Q&A. And then we’re going to get into the process of what Kelly does and then we’re going to talk to Joseph. So let’s get going and talk a little bit about the history of TK. Jereme, yeah, tell us about, I know you bought the shop a few years ago, but yeah, tell us a little bit more about that.

Jereme :
So TK started in 2007. I started working there right out of school for machining in 2009. Worked on and off with them over the years. The owners wanted to retire, so I started talking to them about buying the shop and finally made that happen in July of 2021. We got on board with ProShop December 2021.

Paul:
All right.

Jereme :
And then it was December 2022 that we decided to do the AS9100 certification.

Paul:
Got it. And you were wanting to break into some new markets because just-

Jereme :
Yeah, just diversifying, open more doors. We’d had several customers, or potential customers reach out to us, but we didn’t have certification at the time, so the conversation ended. So I didn’t want to miss those opportunities.

Paul:
Got it, got it. Okay, awesome. Well, I think we’re going to go ahead and watch, as you can see here, we got our popcorn. I got my Junior Mints, Jereme’s got his Milk Duds.

Jereme :
Yep.

Paul:
Got our Coca-Cola’s here. Product placement, definitely not sponsored by Coca-Cola, but we’re going to go off camera here, Kelly here as well. And let’s go ahead and watch this little documentary.

Jereme :
I grew up doing construction and I got into a motorcycle accident. I was hit by a semi-truck. That was the end of my construction career. But I ended up having open heart bypass, I could go on for about an hour telling you everything that I went through and you’d be amazed. It’s surprising I’m sitting here talking to you. Doctors told my parents, the family multiple times to say your goodbyes.
Come on, get over here.
Went over to the machine shop there at the community college and got interested in it, and the rest is history. I got into machining. I got a job here at TK Machine my second quarter in machining, was working in the afternoons.

Speaker 4:
Hey. How are you guys?

Jereme :
Good, how are you?

Speaker 4:
Long time, no see. Do they like driving in the truck?

Jereme :
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 4:
Yeah?

Jereme :
One of the things the previous owner asked me when he interviewed me, he is like, “What do you want to do in five years?” And I just told him, I was like, “Well, hopefully not this.” Because I didn’t want to be in the same place I was five years from now. I wanted to grow and be doing more. So I ended up going back to school for mechanical engineering because every time, and we get mechanical engineers all the time in on projects that we’re working on, I was always very intrigued with what they had going on and the why’s. Got back into the machining side of it, and then I started my own business doing mechanical design blueprints, stuff like that, and I was doing that for TK Machine for a while, and then they wanted me to come on full time doing that as well as fix your design and all that.
Came back and then helped manage the shop. Then the owner started talking about retiring, so I ended up coming back here and managing the place for about a year and a half before we finally had everything worked out, the paperwork done for me to buy the place. And then I officially took over here July 1st at 2021. I actually have a completely new crew from when I started here. I try to get in here at 7:00, 7:30, somewhere right in there. My guys get in here at 8:00. I usually get out of here at seven, eight o’clock-ish at night, Monday through Friday. Then I’m usually here Saturday and Sunday. Usually, probably five to eight hours, Saturday, Sunday.
Yeah, we were pretty light on work end of November, early December, we were down to about a week and a half. I don’t normally have to call customers and see if they have work for us. I was on the phone every day calling and trying to dig up more work. Start thinking about some of the opportunities that have come up in the past, but they ended when the companies found out we didn’t have quality certifications such as AS9100.
Hey, Paul.

Paul:
Jereme.

Jereme :
With switching over to ProShop in the last year, I figured who better to help us do the AS9100 than you guys. I knew you had experience in it and you had the module already set up for it.

Paul:
When you reached out to me first and asked about AS9100, I asked a little bit about your business and your shop, and you told me an interesting story about how you ended up with ProShop in the first place.

Jereme :
We were using an ERP system that we’d been using for about eight years, and I knew at the time when I took over, I wanted to improve what we were doing for scheduling. We were using Excel spreadsheets, that’s what the previous owners did, and the ERP system that we had had a scheduling module in it, but the previous owners didn’t know how it worked. I was unsure of how it worked. I’d even tried trainings with the previous company on how it worked and I couldn’t get it figured out. So I reached out to them to get some kind of support or help on figuring that out. And they referred me to one of their implementation specialists or whatever and gave me a quote for about $5,000 to do that.
And I wasn’t too pleased with that. With having spent all that money over the years, I would think that they would show us how it worked since it’s something that we’d already purchased. And we had a couple back-and-forth emails, and they found out that I had bought the company from the previous owners, even though we’d kept the same name and everything. But my email signature switched from TK Machine Co, Corporation, to TK Machine LLC. And once they found that out, that I bought the place, then they wanted me to rebuy the software, and that was the last straw for me.

Paul:
This is so crazy.

Jereme :
And then-

Paul:
Yeah, when you said, no, I’m not rebuying it-

Jereme :
Yeah, I told them I wasn’t paying any more money. And then they got their lawyer involved and sent me a cease-and-desist letter and wanted me to agree to them coming into the shop and auditing, making sure we weren’t using the software for the next year or so and that just wasn’t going to happen. So I had already been looking at other options for the scheduling before, just so that I knew what my options were. So once I got that cease-and-desist letter, that was that. They had made my decision for me at that point. ProShop was the one that we were looking at. If we were going to have to switch, then ProShop was the one.

Michael:
How’s it going? Good, how are you? Good. Made it.

Jereme :
Yeah. How was the drive over?

Michael:
I’m good. Fine.

Jereme :
Yeah.

Michael:
Yeah, not a problem.

Jereme :
Hello.

Kelly:
Hi. I’m Kelly.

Jereme :
Nice to meet you.

Kelly:
Nice to meet you. Yes. Hi, Juan.

Juan:
Hi. Nice to meet you.

Kelly:
Nice to meet you.

Juan:
I’m going to ask a lot of questions just to get information. So it’d get wrapped and that part would be labeled on the wrapping, and then the blueprint would go in there with the packing slip and other stuff. It has two accesses. It also has live tooling handleware access.

Kelly:
All that Clint in all this, oil and all that. Make the stickers come off. So if this gets rubbed off, how else would you identify this tool?

Paul:
Great point. [inaudible 00:15:52] to not follow fall over.
So what is this scoreboard, Jereme and Mallory?

Jereme :
The comments we make to each other. I made some joke to her, I don’t remember what it was one day. And so she comes over there and just writes, Mallory, Jereme. Jereme 1.
Right up the top.
All right there and all along the wall. See all that piping stuff back there? So I was thinking one, two, three, four.

Paul:
What do you think about making signs like [inaudible 00:16:34].

Jereme :
Like, we’re it doing it for us or…

Paul:
Labeling, and then they also did the same thing on their racking for raw materials and stuff. They had the rack shelf numbers and stuff, correspondence.
May I have your attention, please. Please join us for a complementary lunch and a training session in the employee lounge.
Yeah, it didn’t work. No one’s moving.

Jereme :
It’s not last time yet. They’re like, “No, we got to work. I got to work…”

Michael:
I’m just aware of what’s going on with the company in terms of wanting to have a formal quality management system, which is a mouthful, or a QMS, and getting audited in 9100 in aerospace and all of that. Have you heard any of these words, any mysterious words floating around?

Derek:
Yeah.

Michael:
Do you know why we’re doing that? It’s not a trick question. I’m asking, because I’m going to tell you if you don’t. To make parts that go on airplanes, you have to have this piece of paper that says you have a quality system that meets all these requirements. And so what we’re here to do today is to do a little bit of training and do a walkthrough to see if there’s anything specifically here we needed to correct and tweak. So to get the certification, we go through a couple audits and the one audit that matters is when an auditor will come here and he’s just going to ask to see records of what we’ve been doing to make sure that we’re meeting all of these requirements.

Paul:
Hey Jereme, how’s it going?

Jereme :
Good, how are you?

Paul:
I’m doing well. I’m doing well. It seems like spring is almost here in the Northwest, but then it takes it away from us. Might be similar with you as well.

Jereme :
Yeah.

Paul:
So I just wanted to check in. It’s been a few weeks since we were there filming. I wanted to just check in, see how the process has been going for getting ready for this stage one audit that’s coming up.

Jereme :
Yeah, it’s two days out here. So it’ll be here soon.

Paul:
Yes, before you know it. Yeah, and how’s it been going?

Jereme :
Good. We’re getting things taken care of that Michael and Kelly have been pointing out, getting trains up to date and calibrations, all that stuff. So it’s going smooth.

Paul:
Yeah? Does it feel like it’s a lot of work to prepare for it or is it stuff you would be inclined to have done and cleaned up anyway?

Jereme :
Stuff that I’ve wanted to have cleaned up and done anyways. But yeah, it’s like, okay, it’s got to be done now, so get it done.

Paul:
Holding your feet to the fire to do some of the things you want to do anyway.

Jereme :
Yep.

Paul:
Are you feeling confident about the audit? Are you feeling a little anxious? Some of each?

Jereme :
No, I feel pretty confident about it. It seems pretty straightforward. A lot of the stuff is stuff that we’ve done over the years, but it’s just never been documented. So now we’re documenting and doing the processes properly.

Paul:
Yeah, very good. Yeah, and I can tell just from getting to know you a bit better and even seeing into your system, you like to have all your T’s crossed and your I’s dotted, and that’s the way you like it.

Jereme :
Yeah, I’m a little OCD sometimes.

Paul:
Excellent. Have you had any client interactions telling them this is coming or prospects that you’ve been working with? Anything on the sales side?

Jereme :
Oh yeah, actually we have. I had to reschedule a client coming in here to tour the shop and see how we do things. We’re going to be doing that Friday, and so they wanted to come in on Wednesday.

Paul:
Okay.

Jereme :
No.

Paul:
Right.

Jereme :
We’re going to be busy.

Paul:
Got my stage one AS audit.

Keith:
So, look into your audit itself and then there’s this section where it says supporting documentation. It’s a gray tab up there towards the top. Okay, let’s see what that looks like then. That was my thought, is how do you get… You see the gap, right? How do you go from, here’s something I discussed, that sounds like it needs actions to the previous review of action items without going back through every one of these? It doesn’t draw it forward. You’d have to go back and look at everything you’ve done.

Jereme :
But you actually have to go in and look at it. When you do the next item, if I click check, it brings up.

Keith:
No, no, no. I mean when you click seven, number seven, which is you’re looking at all previous action items, right?

Jereme :
Gotcha.

Keith:
They’re not in there. So when you do number seven every 90 days, do you look back through all of these? Otherwise, if there was a note in there that needs action, how do you know?

Jereme :
No, I get you. The really nice thing about ProShop is they really do listen to their customers and-

Keith:
Well that piece that we’re talking about, you’ve got to be able to do that. So what’s his title then?

Jereme :
He’s the shop manager.

Keith:
Right.

Jereme :
I think.

Keith:
I think. That’s pretty funny.

Jereme :
I don’t know. I asked him, “What do we call a now? Shop manager? Shop foreman?” He is like, “I don’t know.”

Keith:
Manufacturing manager is what I have written down from last time.

Jereme :
Page your manufacturing manager in here and see if he comes.

Keith:
He’d be like, “Who the fuck is that? Who is he paging?”
Calibrate and verify for both at specified intervals or prior to use.

Jereme :
Okay, so we’re good then. Okay.

Keith:
Or prior to use.
Anybody else running the job in the back?

Jereme :
Juan’s the running job back.

Keith:
Oh, he’s got you on the [inaudible 00:23:14].
Juan, are you signed off to operate?

Juan:
I was when he told me I was this morning. But it does appear that he forgot to check in there.

Keith:
It’s two-fold, right? You should have done it and he should have checked it.

Jereme :
And I get on and ask him. I get on him like, “Why are we…” If I see something and I go to ship out a part, and three ops back, it’s not checked off. I’m like, “Okay. So you failed. You failed. You failed.”

Juan:
We both failed on that one.

Keith:
Okay. As long as you two acknowledge it, I’m just going to keep writing.

Juan:
Don’t.

Keith:
You caught it really quick, though. What’s the dimensions on it? What should it be?

Derek:
Eight inches.

Keith:
What’s the diameter of the material?

Derek:
10 inches.

Keith:
Is that eight inches rated up?

Derek:
Just about.

Keith:
Go ahead. I’ll let you get it ready.
So when I see something red, like the machine Derek’s running over here… Hold on. I get the head shake.
I’ll be recommending certification, initial certification. So I will be reporting this to PRI as soon as we get the audit report done. I have 14 days to have the audit report done. I’ll probably have this in their hands by like tomorrow afternoon. Until you get your NCRs closed, they’ll not issue a cert. But you’ve completed the process, so that’s it.

Jereme :
Okay.

Keith:
Congratulations.

Jereme :
Thank you.

Keith:
All you got to do now is get some non-conformances closed out, bounce some back and forth. So you and I, we’ll get them closed out and get this through technical review, and you should have your cert shortly after that.

Jereme :
Perfect.

Keith:
Good job. Good job.

Jereme :
Thank you. I went out there and gave Derek shit. I’m like, “Dammit. Derek.” And he’s like, “Oh, yes. Well, now?” I’m like, “Yeah, that’s it.”

Keith:
Well, you only had 3 non-conformances. And just make sure you keep working on those things you need to work on, otherwise it looks good.

Jereme :
Hey, thank you, sir.

Keith:
Thank you, too.

Paul:
So just to catch people up, it’s now been a few weeks since Keith did his stage two audit, just a formality at this point until the cert arrives. Yeah, I’d love for you if you’d share a little bit about that.

Jereme :
Looking back on it now, I think it went very, very smoothly and it was not as much work for me having you guys help us implement it as I was imagining, because you guys got this thing all figured out.

Paul:
The anticipation was worse than the reality.

Jereme :
Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Paul:
Yeah. So if you had to do this from scratch, what do you think the process would’ve been like?

Jereme :
Honestly, I probably would’ve given up on it. To be honest, I wouldn’t have the time. That’s hiring somebody full time to just sit and do that.

Paul:
So as we wrap this up, I’ve really enjoyed getting to know you better. I have just such respect for people like yourself that jump in with both feet to shop ownership, which I’ll say forever is the hardest job in the world. What has it been like working with our team through this besides that it was easier than you thought?

Jereme :
It’s been great ever since we got on with ProShop. I feel like we’ve had the attention, I guess that has been needed to be successful. It’s not very often that you do find companies that care about your success and it’s almost like you guys are a part of our team. That’s how I feel.

Paul:
That’s a nice sentiment. Thank you.

Jereme :
Yeah, I’ve got maybe one or two companies out of all the companies that we deal with where we feel like there’s a true partnership there and that other company is invested in our success as well, and I feel that way with you guys for sure.

Paul:
Do you feel like it’ll be an important part of your growth in the future?

Jereme :
Oh, yeah. For sure. I think it’s definitely going to open a lot of doors for us and especially allow us to be more diversified than what we are right now.

Paul:
All right, Jereme. Well, thank you so much for doing this whole project with me. I know it was extra work for you to do these videos and have us come visit, but it’s been a true honor and a pleasure to get to know you. And yeah, stay in touch. I wish you all the success in the world and look forward to watching you grow in the future.

Jereme :
Yeah, I appreciate it. It was definitely worth all the work for sure.

Paul:
All right, thanks man. Take care.

Jereme :
Thanks.

Paul:
All right. Awesome. Loving the cheers and the celebration emojis. Thank you people for sharing all that.
Thank you Sarah for playing that. Yeah, that was a fun process. It was cool to get to hang out with you and do that. Thank you Claire, thank you for all the comments. Yeah, those audit nerves and anxiety is definitely a real thing, but we’re going to talk now. If there’s any questions about any of that process, please throw them in the Q&A and we’ll get to those. But can we move down to the next couple slides, Sarah? Oh, are we going… Oh, sorry, we forgot to do the giveaway. We are doing the giveaway for these Bose QuietComfort headphones. And the winner from the LinkedIn contest who is here is Ryan Cudo, CEO of Harbinger Engineering. So Ryan, congratulations.
We will be in touch over LinkedIn chat and we’ll get your address and we’ll get these headphones sent off to you. So thanks for participating in that and being here today. Yeah, I didn’t know we were doing that until yesterday, so thanks to the marketing team for being on it and getting all that stuff going. All right, let’s go to the next slide. After the feature presentation. Oh, yeah, so now we’re going to talk with Kelly. These are just some of the logos of clients that we’ve helped get ISO AS or 1345 in the last year or so. So a lot of names, a lot of logos, and we got a lot more in the catalog right now, don’t we, Kelly?

Kelly:
We do.

Paul:
Yes.

Kelly:
It’s exploded.

Paul:
You’re very busy with a lot of folks. And let’s go to the next slide and let’s just talk a little bit about the process and the timelines and things of that nature.

Kelly:
Well, the process has really scaled itself down. With the Flying Start package that ProShop offers, we can cut that six months down now to just a matter of, like Jereme said, four months for him. We have dialed this in to help companies get certified in just a short amount of time because it is very critical, especially when they have customers that are coming in and wanting these certifications to give them more business. So once they have that, the sky is the limit, as we would say in aerospace.

Paul:
So yeah, I love that the aerospace part of it. So that feeds right into a question that Brad just asked in the chat. We’re ISO certified today, ISO 9,000 certified. My impression over the years is that AS9100 is a lot harder, say twice as hard to get certified and operationally a lot harder. Is that true? So what would you say to that?

Kelly:
I would say that is the misconception of the aerospace, between ISO and aerospace. There’s only just a couple additional requirements and actually you probably don’t even know that you’re doing them already, which would be your-

Paul:
If you were running ProShop, right?

Kelly:
Well, yes. If you’re running and you want to get AS certified from ISO, that’s only just additional couple of requirements, of your suppliers, making sure you have good ones that are approved, making sure your equipment’s in there and then holding your management review meetings and your internal audits. There’s really not too much more continuous. Improvement would be one of them and customer satisfaction. So again, it’s already practices that you’re already doing. Like Jereme said, you’re just not documenting them.

Paul:
And there are things that are good to do anyway. Who would argue against continuous improvement and customer satisfaction being a priority for a company unless maybe you’re ECI software.

Jereme :
Yeah.

Paul:
So actually, Sarah, if you’d mind just going to the next slide. Sorry. I know we’ve been jumping around. Let’s go ahead and play this next video and then Kelly will get a little bit more into the details of the process and Flying Start package and all those kind of things. But this is a video we made a few years ago, we just updated it with some new screenshots. But just talking about the integration of the modules of ProShop with ERP and QMS and the shop floor MES. And this I think is really what enables the process to be relatively easy in addition to the content that we insert into our clients’ systems. So let’s just watch this one real quick.

Speaker 17:
Occasionally a product comes along and transforms the way things were done before. When you see it, it’s so obvious, robust, simple, elegant, like wheels on luggage. Why didn’t luggage always have wheels? It’s so obvious now. We think QMS integrated with ERP is the same way. That’s what we thought nearly 20 years ago when we ran our shop. We didn’t want paper or PDF documents in a filing cabinet or separate QMS systems that didn’t talk with our ERP. So we built ProShop. In doing so, we asked this question. What if the whole reason for your QMS was to make your company better, that compliance and auditing were an afterthought? What if everything was seamlessly connected from procedures to training to non-conformance reports and it was all connected back to your ERP system in real time? Business is demanding in the twenty-first century, customers demand perfect quality, flawless paperwork and all the certifications to prove it.
The amount of work it takes to maintain all of that in a traditional QMS is crushing. You spend hours per day preparing document packages, nights and weekends working on cleaning up your QMS to get prepared for an audit. ProShop turns that idea on its head. Paperwork is prepared in seconds. You are always audit-ready. By integrating all the QMS functions paperlessly and seamlessly with the ERP modules, there’s never a need to manually update data because you have silos of information. ProShop handles everything from the little details, like monitoring your in-process inspection and tracking calibration to the highest level of your company where it manages your quality processes, employee training and org chart. And because it’s web-based, it’s easy to access from any device. Freeing you up from the need to have installed software to manage it all. And you can do it from anywhere, whether you use our cloud service or have your system on-premise. All the forms you need are built-in and available right from the ERP modules. Have an RMA that needs to be issued? Straight from a work order, select the RMA option and everything is instantly filled in and connected.
Employees will receive instant notification and seamless workflows will guide you through the non-conformance and corrective action process. Everyone is up-to-date, all the information is connected. It’s never been this easy to drive continuous improvement in your organization and be ready to show an auditor the proof at any time. If your goal is to become certified or improve your existing QMS. We offer fully compliant templates tailored to the aerospace, medical and commercial markets to get certified in half the time and cost of other systems. And our team of ASQ certified quality consultants can help your company get certification ready. And if you need more assurance, consider that we’re the highest rated manufacturing QMS on the market. When you’re ready to upgrade and build your system to scale your company easily, quickly, and with the highest degree of accountability, you’re ready for ProShop. Book a demo today.

Paul:
All right, thank you Sarah, appreciate it. So for those with a keen eye, notice all those badges at the end were from 2018. We’re just about to update the video to all the 2023 badges, but we’ve stayed in that highest ranked number one position for the last six years. So kudos to the team for all of that. All right, let’s go to the next slide. So yeah, Kelly, let’s just talk about really what is… You obviously had lots of QMS experience before you even joined the ProShop team. Just share a little bit of the contrast of what maybe people are traditionally used to, even what a stage one audit’s generally about and how we’ve flipped that on its head now. And yeah, I’d love to hear you share your expertise and thoughts on this.

Kelly:
So traditionally a lot of companies and organizations do have a paper-based system and they have a lot of documents. And typically in the auditing world, they’ll spend a month, a week, lengthy amount of hours trying to prepare for this one audit, whether it be their stage one or their recertification, their surveillance audits, and I can talk about that.
So what happens is first getting ready for a certification, you want to find a certification body that’s going to want to hold your certification and put you on this ginormous international website of suppliers for all of your aerospace clients. So when you get registered with this IAQG, it’s called the Oasis website and your certification body will help you with that as well. But I also help clients navigate towards that so they can start beginning on what that means. So they get set up and again, you get registered. This is where you’re going to have your conversation with your auditor and your certification body. And this is where OEM levels or whomever wants to find an approved as supplier will just go right to this website.
After that, either you have your own document package, which sometimes is Excel spreadsheets, sometimes you have different systems for your calibration and it’s just all over the place. When you button that up and put it into ProShop, it does make things for auditors a lot easier to navigate through in order to get no findings. Usually companies, we have a different type of way of doing it because it’s paperless. So their auditors are shocked when they come into ProShop clients and say, where is this paper document of your traveler? Where is your calibration documentation? And you say, well, it’s all in ProShop. And so you go through the links that are connected to it, you go through the different modules. And I’m going to say that ProShop has really built their company hub as the key to your auditing because the way that ProShop links everything makes it so much easier.
You want work orders for the auditor to see an audit? Great, let’s put those links right on your company hub. Your procedures. Again, your employees can come to this company hub and know where to get their procedures. It’s not just about management knowing where to get the information, but it’s also your operators. So we prepare you with documentation whether you have your own system to be imported into ProShop, which some clients can do, but some clients can’t. So ProShop has done a phenomenal job, shout out to Michael Collins, for revising the Flying Start package into the documents that they are, the shortened procedures, the workflows, the equipment module for the management review, your internal audits. All of this, even a copy of whatever standard you choose of your liking, AS, ISO or medical, it’s written in plain English. So I was just through this certification for a medical lead auditor and I was actually using ProShop’s standard module to help me understand what the standard was asking for in the medical world.
So it is a very powerful documentation system that ProShop has written. By using that and by using how we’re going to set up your suppliers and through all of those modules, the auditing process has really been shortened down. So your stage one is actually a full stage two. The stage one now just basically comes like a formality of checking off some boxes and auditors are surprised by stage one. You’re already prepared for stage two, you have your management review, you have your internal audits, you have work orders prepared, vendors, everything that they need to see, training records. It’s amazing how it’s just linked through. So typically they would come into the stage one. It used to be on site, now they can do them remotely, because Proshop’s web based. Then they have to come, and they actually do have to come in for a day and actually physically be there onsite.
That is a requirement of the higher bees of the certification bodies. They come in, they do your stage two. Usually that used to be two, maybe three days, and now it’s shortened down to maybe a day, a day and a half. Basically it takes them longer to write their report than it does to actually audit ProShop. So by stage two they’re like, “Great, we’ll recommend you for your certification.” And in some certification bodies it does take 30 days for that review. There are some that we can recommend that might have a shorter amount of time in case you’re looking for a speedier process. But the Flying Start content has really been a game changer to everyone getting certified because it’s understandable. We teach our clients what standards is, actually what it is. It’s a business plan. So if you’re trying to better your business and set yourself up with success, the guidelines of AS just makes you a stronger company.
Like Jereme said, holding people accountable. He can see who hasn’t checked off his travelers or work orders. He can see what vendors are on the cusp of being a really bad supplier, because he reviews that information periodically through his management review. That’s the core of the business, reviewing your management review, making sure that everything is lined up. And then once it’s not, then you issue yourself a corrective action. But by stage two, you should have everything prepared with no issues, and auditors are just amazed by how quickly this process has really been.

Paul:
Awesome. And you were telling me just the other day what a stage one is typically taking these days. Can you share a little bit about what… And I guess from what you’re saying, traditionally stage one is like a gap assessment. Where are the gaps that they need to close before stage two can even happen? But with the Flying Start and with your support and the stage one, really there’s no gaps typically, right? It’s pretty much all buttoned up already. So how long is that stage one taking lately?

Kelly:
So far, the stage one has taken, traditionally it used to be a day, now it has taken 45 minutes, maybe an hour. Again, it takes the auditor a lot longer time to write your report than it is to show them the information in ProShop.

Paul:
That’s amazing. And speaking of the information, I know when you did this just with, I think was it Vanguard was one of our clients you did this with recently who did the whole process in two months?

Kelly:
Yeah.

Paul:
How many work order records, customer POs and records of that type are really necessary to show the auditor that you do it the way you say you do it?

Kelly:
So traditionally, after stage one, they want to make sure you’re doing what you say you do. Stage two would be your evidence of those records that you’ve been doing. The timeframe between one and two used to typically take 30 days to 60 to 90 days, because they really wanted you to have that definite evidence that you are doing what you’re doing. So three months in between that time, you’re collecting all of these records. By stage one, you already have that information. So you’ve cut that three months down from your stage one and stage two, just to the matter of a week, two weeks depending on what the auditor wants to come back. So collecting that data with ProShop has really shortened the timeframe because it’s all right there.

Paul:
And do you need dozens of jobs to show?

Kelly:
You don’t. You just need to make sure that you can show data, that you have a legit system that’s actually working and giving you information where you can base off of your decisions. So typically people, auditors would like to see five or six different clients, all this historical information. And really you can have one client with just a few POs. We have a lot of clients that don’t have any AS clients yet. So I suggest, okay, let’s take a couple of those customers, take a couple of those customer POs with a couple part numbers that were relatively simple, let’s get them ballooned, let’s get the dimensions put in the system so that we know that we’re following that flow, making sure all this stuff is put in place. You have calibrated tools, you have great suppliers, and then once that’s completed, I can audit your system and show the auditor that you do have a legit business.

Paul:
Awesome. Fantastic. And then yeah, as we show here on the slide, we are just about to launch our ongoing QMS support plan, process where we have thought leadership, webinars, blogs and newsletters specifically parts of our forum, specifically for our QMS clients, continually updating records and as the standards evolve as the AS9102 form changes, which it just did and we updated that, really making sure we’re in their corner with us being able to even do those gap audits before their recertification, make sure everything’s going to go smooth.
So yeah, appreciate you sharing all that, bringing in your significant expertise. Congratulations on all the certifications up behind you. I know you just got your medical cert, what, like a week or two ago? Great work on that.

Kelly:
Thank you.

Paul:
So yeah, appreciate your efforts to help our clients do this better. Can we move to the next slide? I guess maybe we probably should have had this slide up when you were talking. But really those are the steps, which again, you should sometimes take more than a year, right? From the very beginning, if you’re going to go build a QMS from scratch and find a consultant to help you do that or whatever, and just really short-circuiting that whole process.

Kelly:
And unfortunately that’s the problem is when you do hire a third-party consultant, they don’t know ProShop. And so they try to impose some of their own types of documents or views or opinions on how things should be run. And ProShop being a digital system, all of that’s already built in, because sometimes some don’t understand.

Paul:
Yeah. Yep. Well that’s where your services come in, because it’s just so… You obviously know the system inside and out, there’s no wasted time in rewriting the wheel, recreating the wheel. Fantastic. Let’s go to the next slide. And I think we’re just about to bring on… Oh yeah, so I guess Jereme, because when you are Flying Start package, which is where we insert all that pre-existing content into the system, and you didn’t get that when you first signed up with us, right?

Jereme :
Right. Yeah, we were just looking for a cheap solution to replace our ERP, we weren’t really looking at AS9100 at the time. But looking back at it would’ve been a much better decision to go with the AS from the get-go, because now we’re going back and adding more information that we would’ve added when we first put stuff into ProShop to begin with. So I kind of kicked myself for that.

Paul:
So there’s a question here. Has getting that AS added much cost to your doing business?

Jereme :
No, not really. There’s a little bit of stuff that the guys have to do, but it’s pretty simple as far as the guys on the shop floor, they check boxes that things are done, which before it was they would sign the work order. So it really hasn’t changed what they do a lot. There’s a little bit more that we do in the office as far as keeping material searched, but it’s so quick and easy with ProShop. If I had to do this without ProShop, it would take us a lot more time. Yes. But ProShop has sped us up so much that I don’t notice it really.

Paul:
And I think that gets back to the root of Brad’s question a little while ago, is the as work that much harder than ISO? And possibly with a more traditional QMS, it might be quite a bit more work. But with ProShop it’s just kind of built in and so it’s a few extra boxes to check, but not terrible.

Jereme :
Yeah, no. If I was going to start a machine shop from square one, again, I would start with the AS9100 from the get-go, like I said, and ProShop and all that. Yeah.

Paul:
And then I know that you had, when we were prepping for this, once you got your AS cert, you put that on your website, and then not long after that you started getting some increase, including one of your clients that’s really ramping up now in the nuclear space or something?

Jereme :
Yeah, nuclear fusion something or other half a way of stuff I don’t understand.

Paul:
That’s pretty cool.

Jereme :
But yeah, I’d say probably 15 to 20% of our business now is AS certified customers.

Paul:
And I’m sure that will just continue to grow.

Jereme :
Yeah.

Paul:
Yeah. Fantastic.

Kelly:
I would also like to point out the fact that even though some industries like automotive would prefer to have those kinds of certifications, the equivalent of having ISO or AS is just as good, because it still shows your controls in place. It shows that you have a calibration. It checks those boxes to what would be equivalent to satisfy new clients just in case they don’t have a certification, this would be just as good.

Paul:
Yeah. All right. Thank you. All right, next slide, and we got to wrap this up. So Joseph you’d come on. Welcome. Thank you for joining us. So as we heard, Jereme’s process was four months, we’ve done it now with two. Joseph, share a little bit about your company. I know you’re a relatively new business, been a fan of yours on LinkedIn since you started or even before you started. So give us just a little bit of background and let’s talk about the project we’re about to kick off.

Joe:
Yeah, thank you for bringing me on. So I’m Joe, founder of Novo Modo.
So I’ve been in the industry 20 years, just got out of eight years at Harvard prototyping, Microsoft. And the whole business idea actually was more of a exploration like, hey, let’s do this. Let’s see what it takes to actually do this. And I knew that if I was going to do it and I was going to leave a company like Microsoft, I was going to have to take an approach that was different, that got attention, that was going to tell a story. And so I picked a goal of launching this. My business name is Novo Modo, that is Latin for new way. And so picking a new way of doing it with a new focus and it was a hyper focus idea. Let’s just take one part of this industry and see if we can just kill it. And that was taking my background, five-axis prototyping and bringing it to industry in a very fast-paced environment. That brought me into owning in on specialized machines.
So we own, firmly, five-axis mills out here, specialized CMMs, Wenzel hit that bill. And then it came down to those decisions, which from the beginning was we are launching with a QMS. So I wrote my own QMS from the beginning and I wrote it several times. I had it audited by Impact Washington. They said it was a great one, but I was also like, managing this QMS is going to be kind of a pain. So I was also, from the beginning I was like, I need a heck of an ERP. And so I interviewed a bunch of ERP systems. I’ve used a ton of them in industry, never had the ability to use ProShop before now and we still haven’t used it yet. We’re launching with it, but knew it was going to launch with an ERP. So the decision came to pursue several different brands to see which ones were going to be it.
And when I started to learn a lot about ProShop was one, you guys are based in machining. You guys were a machine shop that built an ERP system. So that already started ringing true to my story of finding super focused systems. Firmly focused on five-axis milling, that’s it. ProShop built by machinists for machinists, or the machining industry, manufacturing industry. That was super valuable to me. And then you guys had a solution for managing my QMS and its revs and all that stuff. And I was like, well, that’s amazing. And then not only that, you guys already had a package that was built around your system. So I wouldn’t have to take my QMS that I already had, that probably has very similar aspects to what you guys have to build it around your system. You guys already have one. So it makes sense. I had a great time writing mine. It was a great practice to then like, okay, let’s now take the one that is built around this system, let’s put it to use and make it work for our shop.
And so that’s what we’re going to do. And so we pursued you, Paul, and had discussions and said, not only should we launch with your QMS as a new company, we’re six months in cutting chips, eight months in cutting chips now, but let’s just do something crazy with it. How fast can we go from start to finish? And when I said that to you, it was like a twinkle in your eye just popped, and let’s see how fast we can do this. I was like, oh man, what did I start? I think you pursued me, not a couple weeks later and you’re like, “Let’s do this. I got a plan.” That hit it off.

Paul:
Yeah, it was culminating in this after doing the project with Jereme, and seeing what Kelly’s done with a few other clients in two months, it just seemed like a natural. And given the fact that we’ve proven out that you only need a very small handful of records, we can accelerate that process with training and implementation and side-by-side QMS. And we’re shooting for a month, right?

Joe:
Yeah, shooting for a month. And it was really cool to listen to Jereme’s story because he took it from the story of I bought a machine shop, I had to make these decisions. I bought into the brand the story of ProShop, and then in four months he’s certified, right? I’m used to hearing companies battle for 2, 3, 4 years. You guys do it four in months. This is awesome. And so now there’s a whole nother story to tell here with a super hyper-focused machine shop that is super small, brand new, doesn’t have any habits to change honestly, other than my bad habits, and we’re going to totally rewrite that.
We need to tell a story of why machine shops, even when you’re brand new, should be launching with an ERP and a QMS from the beginning. Even the most simple versions of it.

Paul:
Couldn’t agree more. Well, awesome. Let’s go to the next slide. I got to be respectful of people’s times on this. I think we’ve answered all the questions. So we’re going to wrap this up. There’s our contact info. Thank you all so much for joining. I appreciate this. This has been super fun. And we’ll talk to you all later and see you on the next webinar.