What's the difference between running a packaging design, printing or real estate business and running a machining job shop? According to Cindy Carpenter, founder and owner of Corona, CA’s EMX, a wire EDM job shop, there isn’t much.

“They’re more alike than they are different,” she says. “They’re all service businesses. Customers want fair prices, good service and, of course, quality workmanship.”

Carpenter speaks from years of experience, because she has successfully done all those businesses.

“I’ve had my own business since I graduated from highschool,” she says. “For years I had my own package design and print brokering business, and then I went into real estate for a few years. I made a lot of money. Two and a half years ago I invested some of that money to start EMX with my husband, Dave, who is an expert wire EDM machinist. Dave had worked for other people for years, managing their shops, solving their problems. One day I said, ‘Why don’t we start up our own EDM shop?’ Dave liked the idea, but said, ‘Only if you handle the business end. I’ll run the shop.’ So, that’s how EMX was born.”

Some people think it is odd that a woman with no machining experience would decide to invest in a machine shop, but Carpenter, who disputes the ‘no experience’ tag, thinks it was a perfectly natural thing for her to do.

“Look, for fifteen years, I sat every night and listened to Dave explain the kinds of problems he faced, and how he solved them. Over the years he operated just about every major EDM system out there, so I learned the pros and cons of the different machines, too. I learned which ones were reliable, which ones broke down the most, which ones produced the greatest precision. I felt as if I was there with him at work, gaining the same experience he was. It’s not like I walked into this business cold turkey.”

“Even if she had, it wouldn’t have made any difference,” says Dave Carpenter. “Cindy learns new things very quickly, and she has the ability to analyze processes and procedures and find ways to increase efficiency. She’s running this shop better than any business I’ve ever been in. We have good equipment, good customers and we’re making money. Mainly because of her drive for efficiency.”

Efficiency Goals

Carpenter jokes that ‘efficiency’ is her middle name, but, in fact, she is adamant about the need for efficiency in all aspects of the business.

“I look at every single thing we do,” she says. “I think how can I make that more efficient? How can I make that more organized? And how can I make more money doing that? That way of thinking is just part of me. I’ve always been in very competitive businesses. If I hadn’t been efficient, I couldn’t have succeeded.”

“She applied that way of thinking when we were buying our first machine, too,” Dave Carpenter says. “When we went down to pick out our first Sodick, I was thinking about money. I was going to buy a smaller one because of price. But Cindy looked at the machine and asked me, ‘What percentage of the jobs we’ll get can be done on that machine?’ I said, ‘About 50% I think.’ She looked at the Sodick AQ750 and said, ‘What about that one?’ I said, ‘Probably 98% or more of the jobs we get can be done on that one.’ ‘Okay, that’s the one, then,’ she said, so our first machine was the AQ750.”

“It didn’t make sense to buy a machine that would only do half the jobs or 70% of the jobs we would get in. With the AQ750’s big work envelope, we can do multiple setups, and when the jobs are right, we can run lights out, too. When the machines are sparking, I know we’re making money. I wanted a machine that was capable of running 24/7, which is what we got.”

Since buying the first AQ750, Sodick’s biggest machine, Carpenter has purchased 4 more machines: an AQ327, an AQ300, an AD3L Sinker, and a K1C hole popper.

“Once we had the AQ750,” she says, “we didn’t need another large machine, so we bought the smaller ones. As it has turned out, the K1C has been one of our busiest machines. That thing runs continuously.”

Paperwork Efficiency

According to Carpenter, their larger customers expect high-quality workmanship and on-time delivery as a given.

“They expect those things from all their vendors,” she says, “and, of course, we give it to them. But what many of them are really concerned about is paperwork, the paper trail, so I decided that that would be one of our strengths.”

To achieve paperwork efficiency, Carpenter asked a previous business associate, Richard Gail, to join the EMX team. “Richard is highly skilled in several areas,” she says.

“He’s a good salesman, who has been responsible for helping us grow, but he’s also a computer whiz. He handles our QC work, and he has written a customized jobtracking package for us. I told him that, if a customer called for a copy of an old inspection report, I wanted to be able to email it to the customer instantly, while we were still on the phone. Richard has done that. He designed a modular job tracking program for us that can grow as we do.”

“The system allows us to track inspections, delivery receipts, purchase orders, all the paperwork that is important,” says Gail. “We scan in all the documents we get from the client and attach them to the jobs so that we have a complete paperless history. We have error correction. We have time sheets. We have invoicing. Estimating. These are all modules. The way the system is set up, it can be very quickly customized to meet virtually any customer request for tracking. Cindy wants instant record retrieval and this system gives it to her. Our customers are shocked at the speed with which we can respond to their requests for information.”

Equipment Efficiency

Carpenter’s first machine was a Sodick wire EDM, but choosing Sodick was not a casual decision.

“Over the years, as I said before, Dave had run all the major machines, and all of them produce high-quality parts,” she says. “But Dave was experienced at setting them up, and running them, so, of course, I turned to him for his opinion about what to buy.”

“Cindy wanted quality, efficiency and reliability,” Dave Carpenter says. “So, I told her that in my experience the Sodick machines would give us all of those. The Sodick autothreader is very reliable, and it has a simple, easy interface. Also, the Sodicks come with built-in Esprit software, so we didn’t have to go out and buy a separate package to do our programming. The way the Sodicks are set up, I can be programming a new part while the machine is still running, so we don’t lose time during programming.”

“Sodick also offered an optional 5-year, bumper-to-bumper warranty, which I like,” adds Cindy Carpenter. “I figured if they have guts enough to do that, they had a lot of faith in their machines, and I was right.”

Future Efficiency Targets

In keeping with her dislike for anything that wastes time or cuts into profits, Carpenter has her eye on workholding and job changeover.

Carpenter: “My next project is tooling out all of my machines so I can get as close as possible to zero downtime on the machines between jobs. I hate all the machine downtime when my operators are standing in front of the machine loading and unloading parts. I see that and I think to myself, ‘That’s completely inefficient.’ But we’ll find a way to slash that inefficiency, too.”

EMX customers are mainly in the medical industry and other job shops that don’t have EDM capability.

“But it won’t be that way for long,” Carpenter says. “We’re cold calling steadily, and we’re getting a lot of word of mouth references. We’re growing.”

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