Software could end offshoring – Montreal Gazette – Montreal Gazette

And at CMP, they have something else going for it.

“This(VKS) is what sets us apart,” says business development associate Kyle O’Reilly, 25, who started working summers at CMP when he was 16 and punched in full time when he graduated from the University of Windsor a few years ago. He is helping quarterback the sales and marketing of VKS along with Zimmermann’s son, Ryan, 24, the product’s implementation manager.

CMP, in the South Shore town’s industrial park, makes more than 1,000 products. Their order book is full, says Zimmermann senior, and they are considering adding to the 200 already working.

The company also has 100 employees in a factory in Binghamton, N.Y., and another 100 in Zapopan, Mexico, which sells mostly to Mexico and the southern U.S.

CMP, in the most fundamental terms, makes sheet metal or stainless steel enclosures for a large variety of transport, medical, technical and security applications. It doesn’t do the high-tech guts of the machines, it does the complex designing, machining, bending, punching, painting and integration of what the guts are wrapped in.

And it offers clients what it calls its “Deep Dive” cost-reduction program, a consultation/design process that helps reduce the number of parts, streamlines the design, standardizes parts to reduce manufacturing costs and promises mistake-proof design and assembly.

John Soares, 45, the company’s senior vice-president, admits Asian manufacturing labour costs are 75 per cent less than in Canada. But, he says, that doesn’t tell the whole story.

And, if you’re looking to buy 500,000 metal enclosures for a DVD player, CMP is probably not your answer, he says.

But, he maintains, cheap labour means in China they might put two workers on a machine, where at CMP – with their new computerized VKS system, automation, robotics and constant technology up-dates – they can put one employee on two machines.

CMP’s non-union wage rates of $17 to $24 an hour, including benefits but no pension plan, helps the company minimize employee turnover.

But Zimmermann’s baby is VKS, which puts computer screens at every workstation with scanners. When an employee is confronted by a piece for a product, he no longer has to go into a file cabinet to dig out paper instructions as to what he has to do to it, nor does he have to remember the formidable amounts of information involved in the manufacture of the 1,000 or so items CMP has on its order list.

He scans a bar code attached to the piece he is punching, folding, assembling or painting, and video and written instructions pop up on his computer screen. There is no confusion, little lost time and, if all works as it should, no defects or waste.

It also means that workers are no longer reduced to being automatons, relegated to the same task over and over again.

Ideally, they stay stimulated and motivated.