Episode 50: An Interview with Andrew Kossowski, Veterans Metal

In 2020, Andrew Kossowski, a U.S. Air Force veteran and seasoned tech entrepreneur, decided to embark on a new adventure. He was drawn to a traditional finishing operation known as DHS Enterprises based in Clearwater, Florida — a business that had built a strong reputation over three decades in specialized metal finishing, offering processes like anodizing, chem film, and passivation. Kossowski sought to revamp the veteran- and minority-owned business as Veterans Metal, a state-of-the-art finishing operation by implementing cutting-edge technology and expanding its service capabilities.

With a background in quality assurance and testing for military aircraft and experience as a telecommunications executive, Kossowski has brought a unique mix of expertise to his new venture over the past four years. In this installment of Products Finishing’s On the Line column, we catch up with Kossowski to hear the latest about Veterans Metals’ transformation journey and his vision for the what’s on the horizon for the company.

PF: Andrew, you reached out to PF a few years ago at the start of your journey taking over what was a very traditional metal finishing company based on manual processes. You had a big vision for how you would overhaul and transform the business. Tell us about where Veterans Metal is at today.

AK: When we first started, we were a totally manual, analog shop. We had a vision for it, and it started in September 2020, and now we’ve quadrupled the business. We went from a capacity of 50,000 parts a month to about 200,000 parts a month now. Our plan is to get to a million parts a month. So, it’s still a long runway — we have a long way to go as far as filling that capacity.

We’ve added a lot of new staff in addition to the original staff that we have. We’re growing very rapidly. What was interesting is our net growth also added new services like Type III hard coat — we didn't have that before — a lot of our customers were asking us to do it in the new facility.  Before we had to ship it out of state and it’s very costly to do that, especially for hardcoat because it’s used for a lot of larger parts, heavy parts. And now it represents almost a quarter of our revenue. So, that was a good move for us to invest in that.

Then, of course, we implement a lot of automation. Our stainless steel passivation system is fully automated — you press one button, and it does all the work for you. And then our quality control has been incredible — because it’s all repeatable.

One of our visions was to have no paper in the shop — no job cards, nothing to write down. Everything is captured automatically in real time, and that includes start and stop times at every tank, temperatures and pH. And we said, “Wow, we can do this! Let’s translate this into our NADCAP process.”

We just completed our NADCAP certification this year, fully digital. There was no pencil and paper involved. It would ask for something. We’d push a button and generate reports in detail, showing who did it, when they did it, when they stopped it.

There wasn’t anything lacking in our digital NADCAP process, which is a huge factor. When we have audits in the past it could be very disruptive. On pencil and paper there can be a lot of concern about capturing it correctly.

PF: Having just gone through this major overhaul of your business, you’re in good position to offer advice to others who are updating their shops. What are some of the challenges that you ran into when you went through some of this transformation?

AK: There are several. One of them is the fact that even though we planned in advance, we were using 22 different vendors across eight states for the new shop, so logistically, it was very interesting. One of the things that I advise is to have regular meetings with suppliers as they're progressing through the development and construction of what whatever you’re implementing. We did that regularly, but despite that we had an instance where when it was time for delivery, the supplier hadn’t even started building what I needed. And that was one piece of equipment — it was a significant piece of equipment. But what we did have fortunately is a plan B. My advice is if you’re implementing a new service, to have contingencies. What is your plan B?

PF: Can you talk a bit about how your team adapted to all of these changes?

AK: I think the one thing that we did really well was adoption through the team. As we were looking for suppliers and software, we were looking for things that people from ages 23 to 62 could adapt very quickly. That’s the age gap in my facility. My older team members were worried about being able to learn the technology. We really focused on having user friendly interfaces before we purchased to make sure they were able to be able to use the equipment and adapt to it. That made a huge difference.

If you look at many organizations, they provide a lot of the mechanical training and chemical training — the science behind it, right? But what they lack today is digital literacy training. They don't provide training for strategic thinking and how to interpret that digital data. I’m hoping this will become a new trend. If we’re looking to bring new people on board, we need to invest as an industry in those two areas.

One of the things that I did was to provide a lot of training up front. I’ll give you a recent example, when recruiting two new hires, I gave them advance access to all of the classes that are available for our software. So, by the time they show up to my plant, it’s not going to be new. They’ve already done all the training — they’ve had all the classes in advance and they're ready to go. That's providing the digital literacy.

For the strategic thinking, you have to be able to provide training. How do you interpret that data? When you see some trends — let’s say you’re getting close to your upper lower control limits — when is the right time to take action? This kind of strategic thinking is something we also provide training for in our company.

These are two areas that I feel that we need to place more focus more on in our industry.