The Sales Engineering team at O’Fallon Casting acts as the primary
point of contact between the business and its customers. Because of this, it is
critical that all of the technical and quality requirements of customer
products are understood by each Sales Engineer. Additionally, the Sales
Engineer is responsible for verifying the contract requirements and ensuring that
they are met. They essentially, acts as the program manager for the customer at
the foundry. This past February 11th-13th, O’Fallon Casting had the
opportunity to send one of its Sales Engineers to take part in a three day
quality training course hosted by one of its aerospace customers. Typically, this course is only open to Quality
Engineers or Quality Assurance representatives. O’Fallon Casting, however, requested
that their Sales Engineer be allowed to take part in the training in an effort
to promote cross training. OFC felt that this training course offered a superb
opportunity for its Sales Engineer to be exposed to its customer’s quality
organization and quality requirements.
The three day training session
took place in Anaheim, CA. The sessions are typically offered once a month in
varying locations. About thirty five Quality Representatives from various
suppliers were in attendance. Each day lasted eight hours and was comprised of
a combination of lectures, question and answer sessions, and assignments. Coursework
covered a wide array of topics including First Article Inspections,
Part Marking, Product Safety, and Special Processes. Each topic covered
customer specific instructions and preferences for each process. There was even
an opportunity to prepare an entire mock First Article Inspection package using
the customer’s procedure. This provided vital insight into how this customer
accepts inspection data. In turn, this training will enable streamlined qualification
of new castings to our customer. Now that the Sales Engineer is more familiar
with their processes, design and inspection data can be better communicated to
their engineering and purchasing teams. Individualized customer training in inspection
and part qualification is important as each company has a different
qualification process to follow. O’Fallon Casting encourages other companies to
provide similar training.
Now that the Sales Engineer is course
certified, he can act as a better liaison between OFC’s Sales and Quality
departments. Furthermore, the way our customer handles and resolves quality
issues can be better understood. This is extremely beneficial for communication
between OFC and its customers. This valuable experience demonstrates the need
to expand these classes to supplier employees outside of the quality
organization. Contract officers, manufacturing engineers, and other critical
employees all act in the production of customer product and can benefit from
this exposure. This training experience
demonstrates O’Fallon Casting’s commitment and dedication to our customer’s and
their requirements. We are willing to go the extra mile and put forth every
effort in meeting your product’s needs.
