PMPA Membership Value

PMPA member value can be broken down into four core buckets: benchmarking, networking, savings and training.

1. Benchmarking

1. Business Trends Reporting – Owners/leaders of the company can use this report to compare the company’s performance with the industry.
2. Shop Wage Survey – This report helps companies understand the need to get wages right in this era of needed skilled workforce.
3. Executive/Admin Surveys – This offers an industry focus on professional salary jobs that give the shop a competitive edge

2. Networking

In Person – We have three national meetings (Annual, Management Update, and National Technical Conference) and local Chapter Meetings for people to focus on the latest developments and issues our industry faces.

Electronic – We have five core listserve discussion places to share (Technical, Quality, IT, HR and Corporate).

3. Savings

Our Affinity partnerships include Ahola (payroll), Grainger and Partnership. Many members report their savings exceed their dues investment.

4. Training/Apprenticeship Program

Mechanical Aptitude Test – This is the ability to screen new hires and assess current capabilities and employee knowledge.

Shop Safety Course – The course covers shop safety practices, OSHA facts and basic first aid.

One-Year CNC Operator Certification – This credential can be earned entirely through our online portal. Supporting materials will be delivered to your participants. PMPA will serve as the main point of contact through this process.

Apprenticeship – PMPA is investigating the role to serve as intermediary between a PMPA member company and the U.S. Department of Labor to provide nationally scoped apprenticeship programs for CNC machinists. PMPA supports employers with documentation and program structure, provides online materials and serves as liaison with DOL.

Return on Investment

PMPA has several programs which can return more than the members’ dues investment back each year, such as freight discounts through Partnership, savings on maintenance supplies and repair items through Grainger and discounted legal services through Fisher and Phillips. Our newest partner, Ahola, provides discounted payroll and human resource management services. The ability to get answers to a process down problem immediately through our listserves and staff can be the most powerful payback. Proactively avoid OSHA or EPA penalties by staying up to date with enforcement developments in these areas through PMPA.

Involvement/Career Advancement

Those who want to be involved will be the ones who will be advancing in their organization. PMPA is the organization that can supplement an employee’s development. We do this by:

Offering programming that can develop careers from the shop to the office. Our conferences hit a cross-section of talent from beginning classes to advanced classes. Our focus on technical, quality and management tracks continues to reach those who want to learn.

Recognize the programming that we offer as worthy of continuing educational units. We track these units by individual. Should anyone give us a call, we would be able to identify not only the type of training that was offered, but also can summarize each class and activity with the promotional material from the actual event.

Participating on a committee or chapter leadership group. Many times, the lessons learned from this involvement are beyond just ‘going to the meeting.’ The discussions outside of the formal agenda are the opportunities to further enhance/develop ideas to take back to the shop.

Involvement has many forms. Just getting to an event could be a huge start for many. Others like to be part of the leadership groups, from chapter to board. The key is to continually grow. The method by which that is done is up to the individual.

So why choose PMPA over any other association?

Technology, technical talent and like-minded people. PMPA is the only national trade association exclusively serving the needs of the precision machining industry. Our association does not try to cater to everybody. We focus specifically on high precision contract machining. This means everybody in this association can address the concerns of another member. The machinery that our members use is fundamentally similar. And while we are expanding our reach to address other means to make our parts, the industries we serve remain the same.

The employer gets industry-focused networking. Not just with whoever happens to be in their geographic neighborhood, but contacts in the same industry facing the same challenges, and solving many of the same problems. Managers do not have to go it alone. Nor do they have to talk with the guy that owns a couple of neighborhood car washes to figure out what is going on in the business world, because is who else is in the local chamber. Through PMPA, shop owners and managers have a network of trusted fellow business owners they can have a conversation with, share lessons learned or combine forces with to address shared concerns. It can be lonely at the top, especially if you are the only precision machining shop in your zip code.

Where do you turn for assistance as a business owner? Many other associations offer a lot of special shopping deals for members, but when you have a machine or production line down with a never before seen problem, how does the special discount pricing deal they offer help you? PMPA’s manufacturing and technical listserve provides a prompt and authoritative means to get the collective wisdom of the industry’s real experts on just about any problem that can arise in a shop. Along with that comes recommendations for vendors, offers of loans of parts, tools, or gages or other necessities to get the process back into production.

“But, I can use Google and get the same results.”

We have heard this before, but do not believe it to be a valid statement. There is an authenticity/ownership of the posts from our people. They know that more than 1,000 others are on the list and can see how they respond and

the advice that is being offered. Our lists offer the group fact-checking and problem-solving methods. Our people hear different opinions and ideas because they know that the feedback will either reaffirm what they suspected or give them another way to look at the issue.

Our most active list is the technical list. We call it our shop’s 9-1-1. How much is a down machine costing each hour that you wait for a factory person to come in? In most cases, there are three to four actionable responses to get equipment up and running immediately. This is a real-time response, not a forum that somebody may choose to get to sometime down the road. When our people see posts, we know that someone is in need now. Credibility is key. PMPA members have credibility and a shared commitment to strengthening North American manufacturing.