customerspotlight Delivering Quality on Demand Cullip Industries One of the main features of ESPRIT inspired Cullip’sby purchase Parts that machined in ESPRIT Central was Utahthe Tool. ESPRIT KnowledgeBase™, a database for storing tools, speeds and feeds. By Stacey Wiebe Cullip Industries Delivers Rapid-Fire Service with ESPRIT CAM that doesn’t mean that Brinks didn’t earn his stripes. And though the nature of the job has changed since the company was founded in 1959, its goals remain the same. CJ Brinks counts his blessings as he stares from his Indiana office and into a snowy afternoon framed by the coming twilight. “Our mission statement — our filter for everything that we do — is to deliver quality on demand,” Brinks says, taking a breather to talk about life at Cullip before he heads home. It’s near quittin’ time on a Friday and Brinks, whose shirt sports a name tag that bears the words “plant manager,” answers a few last-minute questions as the staff of Cullip Industries streams through the door and into the waiting weekend. “That’s what ESPRIT allows us to do: deliver quality on demand.” Times have changed in the seven years since the 27-year-old father of two started his career cleaning the machines on Cullips’ shop floor. Sure, it’s a family business and, sure, it doesn’t hurt that business owner, John Cullip, is Brinks’ father-in-law — but By ESPRIT®, Brinks means the plant’s computer-aidedmanufacturing (CAM) software by DP Technology Corp. The software has been part of Cullip’s lineup for about 12 years, since John Cullip switched to ESPRIT from the company’s former CAM software. Incidentally, the company made the switch to CNC machine tools in 1982, when Cullip urged his father, the business’s original owner, to take the leap. dptechnology.com 1 customerspotlight In the intervening years, Cullip has become less a tool-and-die house and more a job shop. “ESPRIT had exactly what we needed,” says Brinks, who heads up all mill programming at the plant, by way of explanation. “What we needed was software that could help us program parts quickly.” CJ Brinks, Cullip’s plant manager. Though the use of ESPRIT is among the blessings Brinks is counting, he doesn’t stop there. For starters, there’s his “wonderful, fantastic wife, Amy,” his 4-year-old girl, his 2-year-old boy and a new baby girl arriving in March. There’s also the fact that, despite a questionable economy, business has been better than ever. The company has even hired additional staff to shoulder the load. Though the business began its 50-plus year run as a tool and die shop, Cullip is now primarily a job shop that serves four main customers and derives roughly 50 percent of its business from the aerospace industry. that Cullip dropped more than half of its previous 10 or so customers. By decreasing demands on its time, the company made itself ready and able to respond to changes and deliver rapid-fire service with a personal touch. With ESPRIT and a range of machine tools — including an assortment of vertical and horizontal mills, a trio of lathes, one wire EDM machine and one Citizen L-32 Swiss-style lathe, the company is better equipped than ever to respond to change at the click of a mouse. Cullip Industries One of the main features of ESPRIT that inspired Cullip’s purchase was the ESPRIT KnowledgeBase™, a database for storing tools, speeds and feeds. “We saw this feature as a potential time saver, and it has been,” Brinks says. “Our mission statement — our filter for everything that we do — is to deliver quality on demand. That’s what ESPRIT allows us to do: deliver quality on demand.” -- CJ Brinks, Cullip Industries Twenty percent of that aerospace business is attributed to a single customer that specializes in cooling systems. Though it also provides parts for a maker of professionalgrade paint sprayers and two other mainstays, Cullip seeks to diversify business by adding a couple more customers and continuing to deliver the service that sets it apart. “We were getting pulled in so many directions, so we decided a few years ago to decrease the number of customers so we could really serve the ones we have,” says Brinks, who adds “It’s been a good situation for us,” Brinks says. “We found that if we take care of our customers, they more than take care of us.” Though materials commonly used by the company — such as various stainless steels, cold-rolled steel and aluminum — are not of the challenging variety, the parts it’s being asked to make are of the increasingly complicated sort. “Our customers are giving us some complex things to do,” Brinks says. “With the assistance of ESPRIT, we have proven dptechnology.com 2 customerspotlight we can handle more complex parts with the equipment we currently own. Our customers have seen this and are asking us to quote these complex parts.” “Among the tougher dimensions on the part is a ground radius that is held to .0005-inch in both size and position,” Brinks says. “The customer requires the part to be both flat and perpendicular within .001 along the entire length of the part.” This part was completely programmed in ESPRIT and, as Brinks explains, it “had a new shape” after each operation. “We used ESPRIT to generate the solid shape at the beginning of the operation to see how to hold the part, how to avoid colliding with pre-existing walls, and how the part will look when the operation is complete,” Brinks says. “Simply put, ESPRIT saved us several headaches before setting up the part in the machine. The limit to the ability of ESPRIT has rested in me as the user, not in the software.” “What I like about ESPRIT is that it’s straightforward, simple, and user-friendly,” adds Brinks, who had no experience with CAD or CAM software prior to his experience with ESPRIT and learned the software using selfguided tutorials. DP Technology Corp. 1150 Avenida Acaso Camarillo, CA 93012 USA The shop floor at Cullip Industries. Though the self-starter in Brinks had no problem picking up the intricacies of the user-friendly software, he’s thankful for the rapid response to that DP Technology aims to deliver to its own customers — not unlike Cullip Industries. “Though many different types of CAM software will do what you need them to do, it’s the service that we receive that sets ESPRIT apart. We have yet to use any software of any sort in the shop that has such a good response,” he continues. “If we have a question, DP Technology has an answer in 30 minutes or less. All it takes is a short phone call. We use the software every day and, if something comes up that we can’t fix or change, we can’t afford to wait days or even hours for an answer. This is where ESPRIT excels.” g Cullip Industries Among those parts is a lock system for a printing press that begins as a 35-pound piece of 416 round stainless stock with a two-and-a-half-inch diameter. When the part — which requires a tolerance of plus or minus .0005 on several dimensions — comes off the machine, the 28-inch-long part sports holes and odd angles and has been pared down to 11 pounds. ON THE WEB: www.cullipindustries.com Phone: 1 800 627-8479 Outside the US: + 1 805 388-6000 Email: esprit@dptechnology.com ESPRIT is a registered trademark of DP Technology Corp. ©2011 DP Technology Corp. All rights reserved. dptechnology.com 3