When Chuck Zinke built his second finishing and coating operation over 100 miles away from the first, he quickly added a new word to his vocabulary.
Chuck Zinke“Delegation,” says Zinke, who started Perfection Industrial Finishing in Tucson, Arizona, in 1995 and added a second plant in 2020 in Chandler, about a 75-minute drive north near Phoenix.
The expansion was necessary for Perfection, which offers powder coating, ceramic coating, liquid coating, and chemical conversion processes at both locations.
But trying to be in two places — especially when it’s a hefty drive between them — forced Zinke to rely on his teams at each location to manage the operations, something he says he is not in DNA.
“When you finally learn to delegate, it gets easier and easier,” he says. “But it’s tough to learn how to delegate. It's tough when it is your baby; I started this in my garage 35 years ago and have always been hands-on.”
Adding 30,000 More Square Feet of Finishing Space
The Phoenix location in Chandler is a 30,000-square-foot facility that augments the location in Tucson.As Zinke was planning for the opening in Chandler — and getting equipment and fixtures into the 30,000-square-foot facility — he noticed something remarkable happening back in Tucson, which also has over 30,000 square feet in two buildings.
Things ran just as smoothly as they did when he was in the shop every day, and work continued to get accomplished at an extremely high level. It was both a pleasure for Zinke and a bit of neuroticism added in.
“It's tough to let your people run the show, but when I got out of the way and allowed these very sharp people to run things, it was fantastic,” he says. Even some of the younger folks showed just how sharp they are. They took control and ownership of their positions. They blossomed and grew, and it's made my job much easier.”
So much so that Zinke can now travel the U.S. to visit his customers or call on a prospect, at least once a month, he is on a plane or in a car to visit his partners here or in Mexico, which has helped Perfection Industrial Finishing flourish even more.
Most of the work comes from contract manufacturers in the aerospace and defense industry, which requires Zinke to keep quality standards high and his team well-trained.
The growth of the company — and the people he has working with him — allows Zinke to work from his home office in Chandler and spend at least one day per week in each location in Tucson and Chandley.
“If you have good systems in place, you can manage it through data,” Zinke says. “That is really what we look at now, which was a change for me because I was so hands-on; I could do almost every process at the shop at either location.”
Obtaining Multiple Certifications and Accreditations
Perfection is ISO 9001 and AS9100D certified and Nadcap accredited.Perfection is ISO 9001 and AS9100D certified and Nadcap accredited. The shops can meet almost all Mil-Specs on liquid coating up to 20 feet by 20 feet by 60 feet and perform passivation and chromate conversions Types I, II, and III.
The powder coating operation handles parts up to 30 feet. It also offers media blasting services, chemical cleaning, and some part-making. Perfection recently added Teflon coatings, and Zinke is working to get its hard anodizing processes back online.
Perfection services about 600 monthly customers between the two locations and has an active base of over 3,000 clients. Most of the work comes from contract manufacturers in the aerospace and defense industry, which requires Zinke to keep quality standards high and his team well-trained.
The Tucson location has become a fulfillment center for customers and a finishing operation.
“We've just started offering value-added services such as hardware insertion and threaded insert to help support the customers,” he says. “In Tucson, we're seeing more of that requirement, especially when once that facility became Nadcap, we wanted to dedicate that facility to a more full-service, one-stop shop for many of the customers we're getting that are on the East Coast, in the Midwest, in the Salt Lake Basin, and Southern California.”
Bringing Anodizing Back Online
PIF brought its hard anodized back online, and submitted final testing for high-temperature Teflon coating.More importantly, Zinke wanted to avoid drop-shipping some components back to the customers, which can add substantial costs and delay time. They are also scheduled to bring their other anodizing process back online soon.
“We had one customer that ate up a large portion of our capacity in our anodized tanks,” he says. “We stopped doing hard to anodize for a little while, about 14 months, while we've supported this customer’s very high demand. And now that the contract's ending, we brought our hard anodized back online. We've submitted our final testing for high-temperature Teflon coating, which will help support some of our other customers in the aerospace industry.”
In addition, Perfection recently converted some of its phosphate customers to a zirconium pretreatment product that will enhance their capabilities in additional salt spray results.
“Our customers in Tucson are flight hardware,” Zinke says. “We do some defense there, but we're gearing towards more flight hardware in the Nadcap.”
Coating Big Parts and Small Technical Pieces
At the newer Chandler location, they perform painting, powder coating, media blasting, and silk screening and will add the same zirconium process at the end of the year. At the newer Chandler location, they perform painting, powder coating, media blasting, and silk screening and will add the same zirconium process at the end of the year. With very large paint capabilities to support 20 x 20 x 60 components, some of the largest parts they paint are semi-trailers, but don’t let the size fool you.
“We've painted cameras that have been on the Mars Rover for lunar planetary labs that have been very successful in a zero-vacuum environment,” he says. Our scope of what we can handle is from very small technical parts to very large technical parts.”
The Tuscon location has just over 75 employees, and the Chandler location has 35, but Zinke is looking to add about 10 more as new contract work comes online soon.
A request from a specific customer of Perfection brought the idea of opening in the Phoenix area to fruition five years ago. While the enticement of more substantial work was whispering in one of Zinke’s ears, he also knew there would be a financial commitment on his part to buying new equipment and renting space that elevated the risk of opening a second location.
Not only was it a huge financial risk, but Zinke was also faced with dividing his team in half as he opened a second location and moved workers around. He was afraid of breaking the team’s cohesive bond.
“Being an entrepreneur, my wife laughs at me now that she couldn't believe the risks I was willing to take back then.”
“Tucson has been very successful for us, and many of the team have been with us a very long time,” he says. “At least for the initial startup, I moved to Phoenix, and I was here two-thirds of the time as we continued to build the team.”
Finding a Way to Add Talent Through Second Chance
Toni ZinkeZinke had a huge asset when opening the new facility: his then Director of Operations, who also happened to become his wife in 2023. Toni Zinke started in the masking department at Perfection in 2013. She worked her way up in the company, helping them recruit new staff members when Perfection began considering expansion.
Toni Zinke became involved in the Second Chance program, which helps people leave the prison system to find employment. She openly admits to having been incarcerated for a misstep when she was younger and knows how hard it is for those being released to find gainful employment.
Through her experience and connections, Toni Zinke helped increase Perfection’s staffing levels from 35 when she started the efforts to over 100 when the company began opening its second location in Chandler.
Toni Zinke is now Executive Vice President of Perfection Industrial Finishing, and Chuck Zinke credits her tremendously with making the expansion plans work to, well, perfection. She is also a great sounding board for her husband — “She's held my feet to the fire and helped me make some important business decisions” — as he manages the two facilities and an ever-growing customer base.
“Being an entrepreneur, my wife laughs at me now that she couldn't believe the risks I was willing to take back then,” he says. I think that's the entrepreneurial spirit of somebody who starts any company, especially in my garage when I was in my mid-20s. It took me about eight or 10 years to figure out that this is something I can build on, and, of course, I needed to surround myself with many smarter people than me.”
Moving Towards High-Mix, Low-volume Customers
Chuck Zinke inspects parts with a team member at their facility in Arizona.Looking back, Zinke says it was a smart and risky decision to get away from the high-volume coating work that many shops perform with automated lines. Going the batch coating route with high-mix, low-volume customers has paid off as he works to separate Perfection Industrial Finishing from others in the region.
“We like processing parts that require multiple processes and high-tolerance masking,” he says. Our people get a lot of training on blueprint reading and revisiting processes, and we've got a great quality department, from quality management and associates who work on the systems all the way down to the inspection team.”
The proof was a recent Nadcap audit that was successful for Perfection, even though Zinke says it was probably the toughest auditor they have had yet in the years that they have been in the certification program.
“It shows that we have a robust system, and our team is doing a great job,” Zinke says. “As the leader there, that was very pleasing for me to see and hear.”
“What made us successful is the drive to do this, number one, and great customers for number two.”
Zinke’s continued growth plan is to keep looking for opportunities, especially those in other parts of the U.S. He is seriously considering opening a new location in Salt Lake City, where his daughter and grandchildren reside.
“It's all about partnering with your customers,” he says. “Of course, price is a concern for those customers, but we look for the customer where it is not their top concern. They ultimately want customer service, and quality is paramount. They want to get the job done right the first time back, and they want on-time delivery.”
Duplicate Best Practices at Both Locations
Perfection services about 600 monthly customers between the two locations and has an active base of over 3,000 clients. Being able to duplicate best practices at both locations means opening a third location will be easier with lessons learned over the last five years, but Zinke says he and his team are ready for the challenge.
“What made us successful is the drive to do this, number one, and great customers for number two,” he says. “Above all, our systems helped us because we could take the great people we have with the systems and help the new team in Phoenix learn.”
Aside from learning to delegate, Zinke says learning to use the data his ERP systems gave him has made him a better manager than ever before.
“We used to scrub all kinds of data until we really figured out what the key performance indicators that we were looking for were,” he says. But more importantly, we share all that information with our team; if we keep all the data to ourselves and management and don't share that with the team, then it doesn’t help with our goal to improve. It’s another valuable tool that has made our team more successful.”
