What’s New at Sun
It already feels like summer down in Florida with temperatures hitting the 80’s and 90’s. We are hoping the improvements we have made at our facility since last summer will keep our facility cooler and running more efficiently this summer. As you have read in previous newsletters, we coated the roof of our building in a white plastic to help reflect the sun and have made upgrades to our AC systems.
This week at our facility in Clearwater we have a very talented photographer in house taking pictures for Sun’s new website and other marketing materials. We are very excited to see his work as he was chosen for his skill of producing quality pictures in our industry.
Last month Sun increased our regular monthly donation to our favorite charity, “Mission Rooted out of Dry Ground.” You have read in previous newsletters about this local charity that helps the less fortunate in our area. A handful of our employees are involved in this charity and go on a Sunday to hand out food , clothes and house hold items to our neighbors in need. In April Sun helped this charity buy Easter baskets for the children. Each child received a beach pail filled with goodies. Their little faces shone with gratitude and excitement!!
Continue reading this newsletter to find out about the improvements and successes in the Molding, Stamping and Marketing Departments so far in 2014!!!
Letter from the CEO
As the summer approaches in Clearwater, Florida the number of customer visits seems to slow down!! The first 4 months of 2014 we saw a record number of visitors. This of course, is directly proportional to the new program launches and the freezing temperatures in the North. When you read Steve McKenzie’s article you will get an appreciation of the number of new programs that we are currently working on.
In the first part of 2014 there have been a couple of major mergers in our customer base, this has presented Sun with many new opportunities. The merged companies have to find synergies and cost reductions to help justify the acquisition and provide a quick pay back. Sun is working hard to provide quotes and VAVE ideas, some of which have proven very valuable to our customers. Sun’s engineering and program management skills are proving to be a true “value adding” resource for our customers.
The forecast for 2014 continues to look good. However, we can always accommodate more sales and customers!!
Kind Regards,
Bryan Clarke
“A Word from Molding”
It has been an exciting first quarter of 2014. The Molding Department has been busy working on improvement to quality and efficiencies. We have seen great strides in scrap reduction and increased productivity. We are continuing to convert Red and Black Books and go “Paperless “on the production floor. When complete, each work station will have a computer to access any job file at the click of a button. This will provide our operators with “visual work stations “something that is key to help provide quality parts and process control.
We have started to improve the Equipment Maintenance Program, by adding more maintenance objects and more tracking ability to monitor our performance as well as the equipment. Our goal is to achieve more uptime which will lead to better performance to our customers. Also we have relocated all of our material grinders to the warehouse building. This will provide a cleaner work environment by eliminating all the dust in the air. Reducing this dust will make our machines and A/C units run more efficiently.
Matt Dlugosz
Director of Molding Operations
Continuation of our Success Story
We have been extremely busy with 1st offs and 1st production runs on a substantial amount of new tools. In April, we qualified 13 new dies for 4 new customers. All these were due within days of us receiving production raw materials. In addition to this, we had 9 modular dies that make 18 different part numbers that were all being redesigned and sampled. We also received a new order for 9 more new dies for the next generation of this customers program.
In addition to this, 10 other new tools were sampled for another new customer.
These are the accomplishments that can be met by working together and having all ideas implemented.
This was just some of the additional workload that was managed in addition to producing over 25,000,000 stampings in April for our existing customer base.
I would like to congratulate the entire team for their teamwork and dedication in accomplishing this tremendous task.
Steve McKenzkie
VP of Operations
Marketing Update
Sun’s Marketing Department is proud to announce we are busy working on a website redesign. We last updated our website in 2008, which in the “world wide web” makes our site a dinosaur. Over the last six years there have been many changes in this industry, from advances in web design technology to changes in website styles as well as many improvements in on-line marketing. In the last six years, how people search for your business has changed drastically with the emergence of smart phones. These days everyone uses there smart phones for everything as a way to stay connected to the digital world. Gone are the days of typing 1 or 2 word phrases into a Google search engine on your desk top. Becoming more popular are conversation searches or “long tail query” meaning you ask your smart phone “where is the nearest metal stamper?” and thanks to Google’s new algorithm Hummingbird, your smart phone can give you an answer. This algorithm was designed to help google search 6 to 7 word phrases. So when designing our new website content we will want to take that into consideration. We will be reviewing not only keywords, as we did six years ago but, key phrases to get our biggest bang for our buck in the world of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) content.
So stay tuned for more information about our Fresh New Website coming soon!!!
The Future is Bright at Sun
You have read about the many improvements at Sun in the first few months of 2014. All departments are working together to move our business successfully into the future focusing on making improvements for sustainability.
We would like to welcome our new customers on behalf of everyone at Sun we look forward to working with you for many years to come.
Without our dedicated team of employees “Sun’s Bright Future” would not be possible. A big “Thanks” to the whole team!!!