Analog Obsession: Interviews with the UA Manufacturing Team
Interviews by Joel Braverman:
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| Director of Manufacturing Frank Luft |
Frank Luft, Universal Audio's Director of Manufacturing
Frank is known around Universal Audio for his buoyant personality and friendly manner. Improvements his staff has made have increased manufacturing capacity, eliminated back orders and improved product quality. Universal Audio has a very low rate of merchandise returns. With high spirits and teamwork, and guided by his production manager Adam Myers, the entire manufacturing facility was recently moved to our new site in Scotts Valley over a weekend, with no down time.
I met with Frank in his office, overlooking the shady eucalyptus trees that provide a relatively effective sound barrier to the eternal traffic on Santa Cruz Highway 17.
JB: What do you do at UA?
Frank: What I do is ensure continuous flow of product to meet sales demand by empowering my staff to work together effectively. That means I make sure they know their jobs well and where they fit in the process so they can make good decisions on their own. We've also observed who the natural leaders are, the people who everyone goes to for information, and given them leadership roles in the manufacturing group.
JB: Universal Audio has a reputation for making great products. What makes our products stand out?
Frank: One reason is that we love our products and we have a vested interest in them. A high percentage of UA employees own and make use of our products. We have direct personal contact with all the levels of the product, from the design and manufacturing to owning and using them.
JB: UA manufactures its products in the United States. The analog gear is all built on site at the company headquarters. Many similar companies design their products in house, but have them built offshore in Hong Kong, China or Mexico. Is there an advantage of building products here in the US?
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| UA’s very capable manufacturing team |
Frank: For us, it's actually more effective to build in the United States. We are not a high-volume manufacturer of mass market products. We have shorter lead times internally. We can focus on craftsmanship. We can quickly and easily make changes or improvements in the design or the manufacturing process. Overseas high-volume contracts tend to have long lead times and restrictive contracts. We ship products to countries all over the world--including to China!
The engineers, even our founder, Bill Putnam Jr., can walk in anytime and check on things. They show the care of a parent to a child toward these products. This is very different from factory workers cranking out products that mean nothing to them and shipping them on a freighter back to the designers. To manufacture overseas, it is often only practical to make mass market products, along with all of the compromises associated with such products. UA's design and quality standards are simply better than that.
JB: Since you came aboard at UA, you've been behind some substantial improvements in the manufacturing process. Can you tell me a bit about what you did?
Frank: Part of that involved refining the forecasting processes, so we know how many units we need to build, and how many parts we'll need to build those units. We also more fully utilize our ERP system, a manufacturing and accounting software package that touches all parts of UA. We have empowered employees who are key in keeping our processes smooth and eliminating inventory errors. We've created a kind of feedback loop so that errors are quickly found and corrected, and preventive measures are put in place.
JB: How did you successfully move a whole manufacturing department with no down time?
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| Adam smiles as his team hits the numbers again |
Frank: Really, it was a group effort. We shipped product until the last day, a Friday, at the old building and we were back up and running, shipping product again at the new building on Monday. The whole manufacturing staff made it happen, along with help from other departments.
JB: Who were some of employees who stood out in making that process happen and in helping to make UA products so great?
Frank: Adam Myers, now our production manager, Terry Ramirez, our production supervisor and Max Lin, our manufacturing engineer really pulled together to make it happen. Max and Adam went over the new floor plan many times before settling on a layout that worked with only minor adjustments when we arrived. IT and Facilities made sure our computers and phone systems were up and running. Paul Rebore, our materials and inventory guru, was a major performer in the move as well. He has also been instrumental in helping us to reduce and eliminate inventory errors by feeding back the necessary information to our planning team. Paul is very modest. He'll tell you he "deals with cycle count," but he schedules counts, researches and resolves discrepancies, trains counters, coordinates count issues with supervision, works with sales and accounting, trains employees in transaction processing, guides shipping and receiving, does a myriad of odd jobs, helps out in shipping when required, works with suppliers on some issues, all before lunch! He seriously cares about doing the very best job possible. They all do. It's quite something to watch.
A high percentage of UA employees own and make use of our products.--Frank Luft, UA Director of Manufacturing
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| Dana Bray and Daniel McDermott purchase millions of parts for UA every month |
Daniel McDermott and Dana Bray, our purchasing team, are another couple of folks who make all this possible. They go about their jobs quietly, day in and day out, driving inventory down while ensuring we have what we need to build our products, and they provide direct support to engineering as well. Buyers seem only to catch the glow of the spotlight when things go wrong, but we have so few shortages these days that we are in danger of taking them for granted!
I also want to brag about our assembly and test people. I've worked in tech production forever, but I've never seen such a low error rate on a shop floor, nor have I seen a more cohesive and positive bunch of folks. They persuade every piece of gear we make to be the gems our customers love. It's an absolute pleasure to work with them. You might guess I'm very proud of my staff.
JB: Thanks Frank!
I decided I should follow up and talk with some of the people Frank mentioned.
Max Lin, Manufacturing Engineer
I had a brief chat with Max in his office. On his white board was his slogan of the day: "Tell me what you need, and I'll tell you how you can live without it." That is only partially tongue-in-cheek. Clearly a minimalist, his role includes improving efficiency and reducing operating costs. Max put a major effort into restructuring the manufacturing workflow at UA to maximize efficiency.
I asked Max to tell me a little about making the transition to our new location go smoothly, and about improving our manufacturing process.
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| Max Lin always gives 100% at work |
"One of the things we did when we moved to the new building was to improve our manufacturing workflow. We started with a conceptual idea about having a viewpoint into each phase of product assembly. I worked on creating a floor plan for the new manufacturing facility. We went through 35 revisions. The final design shortens the distances between work areas and parts. There is now a definite workflow from receiving to finished goods to shipping. Each workstation performs a specific task where previously multiple tasks might have been performed."
Terry Ramirez, Production Supervisor
Terry not only supervises production, she also participates heavily in building the products herself, and after quite a few years at UA has experience with all aspects of our manufacturing process. She had this to say about manufacturing's contribution to the quality of products for our customers:
"Well, everybody who works in manufacturing is very conscientious about their own work. They are all incredibly capable people. They enjoy making the products and enjoy the working environment here, and many enjoy using the products themselves. We take a personal interest in making sure that every product that we build is of excellent quality.
Paul Rebore, Inventory Specialist
Paul Rebore is one of the busiest people at UA. On any given day one will typically find him working hard long after everyone else has gone home. He is frequently asked to come up with various unusual tools that are needed in other departments, such as giant drill bits, hydraulic lifting devices and rolling pallets. Somehow he also finds time to go fishing and bicycling.
JB: Paul, what do you do at UA?
Paul: Last time I checked, I think my title was Inventory Specialist. I deal with cycle counting and enter new parts into the system. That isn't the only job I've done here, along the way I've worked in pretty much all the different parts of manufacturing.
JB: Frank tells me you have been helping to improve the flow of our manufacturing process. How do you do that?
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| Paul Rebore never stops moving and refused to pose for this photo |
Paul: I make sure that the number of parts we have in our system matches the number of parts we actually have. If there are less, I tell purchasing to order more, if there are more, we celebrate. Actually, we update the system to match the actual number of parts.
JB: What do you like best about working for UA?
Paul: The paycheck! Seriously. I'm not a musician.
Thanks Paul!