The more things change at S&B Finishing, the more they stay exactly the same at the Chicago powder coater.
Kenny SpielmanAnd that’s a good thing at the 35,000 square-foot facility on West Franklin Boulevard just west of downtown Chicago. Whether it be employees, its customers, or the high-quality finishes they provide, consistency at S&B Finishing is the one guarantee at the 45-year-old company.
Take its 51 employees, for example. More than 30 of them have worked at S&B for over 10 years, including 20+ who have been there for over 20 years and 13 more who have been with the powder coater for more than 30 years.
The Importance to ‘Get Things Right’
Parth Shah and Uju Nkemena lead S&B Finishing for owner Kenny Spielman.“The employees we have are the key to our success,” says Uju Nkemena, General Manager of S&B Finishing. “They don’t jump around to different jobs, and they certainly understand how important it is to get things right.”
This leads to the second aspect of S&B Finishing’s success: its customers also stay around for a long time. The company has a more than 90% retention rate with its customers, who realize that the quality and consistency they receive from the operation makes them stay around for decades.
“We have a lot of customers who have been with us 20 to 25 years or more,” says Parth Shah, S&B Finishing’s Quality Control Manager. “We work very closely with our customers as a team and have very good relationships with them.”
S&B has been family owned and operated since 1977, when Kenny Spielman started the company with his father, Ralph. The facility coats parts for companies such as Caterpillar, Ford Motor Co., Freightliner, General Motors, John Deere, and many more.
Nkemena says the customers range from small batches to those who ship more than 1 million parts a year to S&B to be finished. He says one thing they have learned over the years is to say yes to any new business that comes in the door.
“We never refuse anyone,” he says. “Sometimes we may recommend somebody else, but we always try to do as much as we can to help them.”
Developing In-Depth Customer Surveys
Pleasing the customer is one of the reasons that S&B Finishing has grown over the years. Shah says they do in-depth customer surveys several a year to get feedback on how well they are serving their customers and that they keep an open dialogue with them all the time.
“They talk to us, and if there’s any problem or any questions, we call them directly and say, ‘Hey, this is what we did the last time, or this was done, and what do you expect from us?’” Shah says. “We also send out surveys to our customers to give us an idea of how we are doing and how we can improve on what we’re doing.”
Nkemena says much of the success in meeting customer expectations comes from having a consistent team of employees who are familiar with S&B Finishing’s quality requirements and seem to enjoy the work they do.
During the pandemic, he says the company had only one employee left during that time and that Spielman and his management team have taken an approach to keep not only customers happy but also the staff.
“It’s a two-way street when it comes to our staff,” Nkemena says. “It’s good management, and the employees love where they work. It is very much like a big family here. Kenny has been really good to everybody in terms of pay, in terms of the facility, and making sure that everyone is comfortable working with us.”
Giving Flexibility to Employees
S&B Finishing has a liberal personal time-off policy because they understand and value their employees’ personal lives and obligations. Nkemena and Shah say the “work from home policy” does not work for their industry, obviously, but giving flexibility to their employees does work and to everyone’s benefit.
“It’s a safe environment for everybody to work in,” Nkemena says. “And the door is always open. They also have good interactions with the management, and we support any problems or anything that may come up.”
And while they have employees with extensive longevity, S&B Finishing also has 14 employees who have been with us less than five years, which Spielman says adds to the great mix.
“Their vitality and their techno-savvy nature are helping our company adapt to the shifting landscape of our industry and world,” Spielman says. “These future leaders are the perfect complement to the rest of the team, and their visionary leadership will help us stay successful for many years to come.”
Solving New Coating Challenges
The pandemic didn’t come without challenges, though. Nkemena says supply chain issues have required some adaptations as S&B navigated having enough material on hand to service their existing long-time customers.
“We do have a lot of challenges in that lead times have gone up with our suppliers,” he says. “So that requires us to keep more inventory so we can keep our promises to our customers.”
S&B Finishing still maintains just one shift during normal operations but has the flexibility to add a second shift if the need arises.
“Customers now are a little bit more demanding now,” Nkemena says. “Maybe it’s because everything is running late for all of them because they have their own supply chain challenges. And, of course, we are always the last people on the totem pole, so things often get hurried.”
S&B Finishing runs two conveyor lines and also has a pair of manual booths that it can utilize as well. They can coat parts up to 10 feet in length by four feet in width.
Better Manage Production Flow
Shah says that Spielman and the management team are exploring adding a new software system to better manage production flow. The goal is to extend their current office system out onto the shop floor and make it more paperless.
“That is under development at the moment,” Shah says. “We haven’t applied it or implemented it so far, but we are checking out one or two different software programs at the moment. If we find a match, then probably sometime next year, we would like to make a switch and then go to complete paperless production.”
It will take some time to train shop staff on the system — such as using tablets and stationary terminals to input data — but Shah feels it will help greatly in managing production and collecting necessary data.
“My inspector can fill out the paperwork, and then we can make it flow into the production and then back to the office,” he says.
Nkemena adds that operations had changed — and improved greatly — from when he first started more than 30 years ago, and S&B Finishing realizes that it must adapt as well.
“We used flat trucks back in those days, where you had to write everything down and then go find the papers,” he says. “But it’s a good learning period, too, from that time.”
Increased Data Automation
Shah says the increased data automation won’t get in the way of what has made S&B Finishing one of the top powder coating operations in the Midwest.
“We will have the same processes, but we want to do it digitally,” he says. “My inspectors still need to take all the measurements, but instead of writing it down, they input it into the computer or the tablet. So we still can track it in case of any customer questions on a job, and we can track it back.”
Shah adds that some of the newer employees — those who are a bit more technology savvy — are being cross-trained to assist when the systems go digital.
“A lot of them are looking forward to implementing this new system,” he says.
Nkemena says the ultimate goal of a potential new digital system is simple: helping the customer.
“They realize that the bottom line is the customer,” he says. “Because without a customer, you don’t have a job.”
