Plating Shop Leverages Ingenuity to Strive for Perfection

To be successful, a detailed plan must be established and fulfilled, especially when the bar is set high. Plateco Inc. in Reedsburg, Wisconsin, expects perfection from its zinc plating processes and therefore, its employees. To deliver the highest quality plated parts to its customers, the company has developed a unique and efficient system for the entire pre-plating to post-plating process, including meticulous cleaning stages and planning prior to plating.

Offering only zinc plating — rack electroplating, barrel electroplating and mechanical galvanizing — enables this 80-employee Products Finishing Top Shop to focus solely on this type of plating process, striving to be the best at this one service.

“When a customer asks us to plate their parts, our attitude is that those parts are very close to perfect,” says Jim Schweich, chief executive perfectionist at Plateco. “Our job is to get them all the way there, and we’ll do whatever it takes to make that happen.”

With these high standards, the company’s platers take their jobs seriously. They are talented experts in the plating field who pride themselves in producing quality parts on time, on spec and with low reject rates, the company says.

50 years in the making

Starting their business in a garage in Necedah, Wisconsin, in 1974, brothers Allen and Gerald Schweich believed they could offer a better quality of zinc plating than what was being offered at other companies. They provided mechanical plating with their one big mechanical plating barrel. Mercury Marine was their first customer to get the business on the map. In 1977, they built a 5,000-square-foot facility, and in 1982, they moved to a 10,000-square-foot building in Reedsburg.

By the time Allen and Gerald turned over the company to their children in 2012, the two generations of Schweichs had overseen four additional expansions leading to the current facility’s 75,000-plus square feet.

Now, the plating company contains a large and small rack line as well as a large and small barrel line, enabling the plating of parts as small as a needle to parts as long as 14 ft. Although electroplating is its bread and butter, Plateco also offers stainless steel passivation, special packaging and assembly and a freight business called Plateco Transfer, the company’s second entity. This service assigns semi-trucks to different routes that cover a 250-mile radius from the headquarters. Its customers who are outside of that range use a different carrier to transport their product to Plateco.

“For those within those 250 miles, it is hard to beat our freight pricing,” says Micah Fulton, sales and engineering manager.

Creating unique systems

Included in its services are the shop’s uniquely designed systems that help eliminate the possibility of error. These systems entail precision planning and quality control, and exceptional customer service, the company says.

The detailed planning that is completed by its engineering planning department takes many factors into account to determine the best zinc plating process for every part to exact specifications. The department decides which process, plating line, tools, proper surface area per rack/barrel, and cleaning process would best suit each part. It also determines if there are any specific quality requirements, among other questions. Settling upon these items enables Plateco to provide efficiency, quality and consistent lead times, which average 3.87 days, according to Fulton.

The quality control lab monitors temperature, pH and various chemicals within its plating baths and ensures they are within the shop’s specific parameters. Also, every morning, the quality team reviews its rejected parts from the prior day and discusses how to ensure the problem won’t repeat itself from that day forward. Currently, the company has a low 0.15% part reject rate.

“Usually, when people come to us, they are looking for quality,” Fulton explains. “They often have a problem they need fixed. We’re not known for price; we always like to meet price points for customers and to stay in that field, but first and foremost, we’re known for quality and being efficient in getting things done on time, every time.”

Offering the best customer service is also crucial to the business. In fact, Plateco guarantees processing parts that meet specs, or the rework is on Plateco. It also has a 24- to 48-hour turnaround on request for quotes and a sales team that answers calls immediately or responds to customers within 2 hours. 

Value-added services

Because the company is always looking to meet its customers’ needs, value-added offerings are important to the team. This includes benefits such as order expediting and extensive parts cleaning prior to the plating process.

Offering order expediting sometimes at no extra cost gives Plateco a big advantage over its competitors. “I’ve had a number of customers come to me over the last six months to ask me about expediting,” Fulton says. “They tell me that other platers don’t expedite things for them when they have that need. These days, expediting is becoming rarer since we're busy just like everybody else. So, we like to not charge anything when it makes sense.”

When the company needs to charge for expediting, however, it will let the customer decide whether to do it or not. Fulton adds that the price usually is not expensive, and the shop is not attempting to profit from the costs of expediting.     

The company also prides itself on its pre-plating cleaning process that is part of its operation. It includes up to six cleaning stages that entail heated soaps, acids and some proprietary steps. It also does all its cleaning directly in its fully automated production lines — no precleaning necessary. This efficiency enables the company to give its customers a better lead time and a better price.

Fulton also says the company likes to show off its salt spray chamber to its customers. Its lab can test specific components for the production part approval process (PPAP) or provide supplemental data. Although Plateco is not A2LA accredited, the salt spray chamber is set up per ASTM B117/ISO 9227 and checked daily by certified lab personnel to ensure performance compliance. The quality team accesses the chamber once every 24-hour period. Besides testing customer products in the chamber, it also conducts monthly testing on its most requested processes to ensure that all plating chemistries are within company parameters.

Opportunities

Plateco has qualified for PF’s Top Shops award for the past four consecutive years. The company enjoys reviewing the benchmark survey results each year to find opportunities for improvement. Fulton says management usually schedules a meeting after it receives the survey results. “We digest it and decide what changes need to be made for improvement,” he says.

For the past couple of years, like many shops, the employee turnover rate was one area where the company had room for growth.

“This was on our radar even before the survey, but it really helped solidify what we need to do to move forward and basically that came down to wage increases for a lot of our production personnel,” Fulton explains. So, knowing that giving pay increases helps keep the staff happy, the company followed through.

As far as continuous improvement on the shop floor, Plateco is always open to opportunities for capital investments when necessary. In 2022, the shop invested $650,000 on one of its barrel lines. As a result, it can produce about 25% to 30% more throughput.

The business is also planning to invest almost $2 million to replace a portion of the building along with upgrades to its larger rack line which will require new software and programming that will increase the process’ customization and efficiency. As part of this project, it will replace the roof, everything above it, and everything underneath it.