Nor-Cal's journeymen, welders and machinists are trained in lean manufacturing.

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Yreka, Calif.-based Nor-Cal Products is a relatively small company in a small town, yet it grows increasingly competitive as it expands its facilities to Southeast Asia. Since 1962, the company has manufactured stainless steel vacuum components, and continues to set aggressive benchmarks for improved quality, such as its recent SSQA quality certification.

In a recent interview with Manufacturing Today magazine, Vice President of Sales Sean Mallory discussed Nor-Cal Products’ silicon market, bringing its just-in-time model overseas and the changing industry.

Manufacturing Today: How is your company adapting to market changes?
Sean Mallory: In addition to the global sourcing, we’re having to compete within our supply chain and our customer’s supply chain.

We’re seeing a dramatic shift into the solar and the flat panel display market that somewhat complements our silicon business and our government re­search business. We’ve established manufacturing facilities in Southeast Asia to manufacture many of our commodity-type items.

And we have to set up an infrastructure, as well, close to our customer supply facilities. Right now, we produce 90 percent of our products in the United States.

MT: Who are your customers and how do they define quality?
SM: Our customers specifically are semi conductor equipment
OEMs and flat panel display and solar equipment OEMs, as well as government research and national labs, and then the device manufacturers and end-users.

MT: How often does Nor-Cal’s product line vary?
SM: Our applications change but the products are very stable. The applications change with the emerging silicon cycle and we also develop new end-products for consumers in industrial markets.   

The emergence of flat panel displays, such as for televisions, laptops and computer screens, are an extension of our silicon market. They’re really the future that will augment our core semiconductor OEM business.

MT: Do you use a just-in-time (JIT) approach to managing inventory?
SM: That’s a challenge we have as predominately a domestic company. We have a strong JIT infrastructure with domestic customers. As they move offshore, we’re then expected to commute that JIT model. We have to invest in infrastructure close to our customers in Southeast Asia.

This is very challenging. One of the reasons why we’ve established a manufacturing facility in Southeast Asia is so we can get products there with reduced cycle times and re­duced lead times. We strive for a typical two to four weeks on, say, standard products, and longer lead times on customized products.

MT: Do you practice lean?
SM: Yes, we do. We’ve pretty much been driven by our leading industry customers, like applied material (customers), to incorporate lean manufacturing as they did 10 years ago.

We do an initial training depending on if they’re a journeyman, welder or machinist. They’re obviously coming in through an orientation and given a mentor or lead person that shepherds them through the training.

(Also,) Nor-Cal is in a very good situation to get help by the state in an economically challenged area. We’ve taken advantage of a new program in California called the Employment Training Panel (ETP). The ETP funding has helped us document our training, which helps with employee retention.

We’ve been working (with ETP) for about nine months now. We’re doing a recurring training audit to see how (employees) are doing and give (them) an opportunity to give us feedback. Typically, we have a variety of classroom training feedback provided by management and human resources.

MT: What are you most proud of at your company?
SM: We have been in business for over 45 years and we’ve steadily grown the business into international markets. Most importantly, we’ve re­mained profitable through that growth while investing in facilities in Asia.

We have also reached a very important quality milestone: SSQA certification. This is like an ISO certification on steroids. It’s specific for semiconductor equipment businesses (was) and developed by Intel sometime ago.

In addition to being ISO 9001 certified, we just reached the SSQA level in August. We’ve worked for a couple years to get that.