By Ron Parlengas – President of Duval Precision Grinding
Duval Precision Grinding is a 2nd-generation business with seven decades of experience. The company was recapitalized by local investors in December 2012. I joined the company in February 2013 and, since then, have worked closely with the ownership team to make the necessary investments in equipment and employees to strengthen our dominance in this highly specialized field.
A Wide Range of Precision Grinding Capabilities
Over the past two years, the company has invested in two additional universal grinding machines, expanding our grinding capabilities to accommodate cylindrical seals as large as 54” in diameter. To support Duval Precision Grinding’s ability to inspect and certify results, the company purchased a new Hexagon Advantage Coordinate-Measuring Machine (CMM) that can measure to tolerances of .0001, a digital height stand, and additional inspection gauges to ensure we can accurately perform in-house inspection. In May 2014, we hired a chief inspector with 30 years inspection and CMM programming experience in the aerospace industry.
Efficient and Certified Lean Manufacturing Processes
We achieved AS9100 certification in March 2014, and Nadcap certification in October 2015. To improve our company from an employee-investment standpoint, we partnered with the Massachusetts Manufacturing Extension Partnership Group under a grant from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to train our employees in both lean manufacturing and problem-solving techniques. We have also completely streamlined our shop floor with “5S” workshops, which have helped improve workplace organization, safety, and standardization. To build on the 400+ years of combined in-house experience in this highly skilled field, we are teaching the next generation of grinders though our training programs. In these programs, we we pair new machinists with senior grinders to ensure knowledge is effectively passed on from one generation to the next. Through this learning process, we have changed the paradigm from management direction to employee empowerment. This has not only strengthened our team’s commitment to producing the highest-quality parts, but has encouraged them to make changes on the shop floor to become as efficient as possible.
Building Long-Lasting Customer Relationships
We develop strong relationships with our customers. We not only support their grinding needs, but also offer engineering solutions when possible by designing custom fixtures and managing outside services with our experienced supply chain management team. We also work closely with our customers’ internal engineers to learn how their parts are manufactured and to establish the most efficient grinding processes. We also communicate with our customers’ outside coating and plating houses to determine coating and plating thicknesses and make sure every part is ground according to schedule. We also closely track the status of customer parts and believe that customers should always know the status of their parts.
For the Best Precision Grinding Service, Choose Duval
I am proud of the team’s accomplishments in the first three years under new ownership; I look forward to a future in which Duval Precision Grinding continues to be the sole source of precision grinding for our many valued customers. We pride ourselves in being a trusted partner on whom customers can rely for quality, on-time parts.