Shipley

If you manufacture metalworking machines, cutting tools, tooling (punches, dies, etc.), gages, fixtures, or holding devices and are looking for specialized, experienced help, our Machine Tool Sales Company may have the capability you need. The following enumerates some help we can offer:

• The services of a sales/marketing manager

• An advertising/sales promotion program:

For a new company

For a new product or service

• Development of a field sales force — direct, sales representative, distributor, or manufacturing representative

• Sales aids (brochures, price lists, etc.) for products or services

• Space advertisements for trade publications and Thomas Register

• A quality assurance manual, documentation, and procedures toward meeting ISO and QS standards.

• Assistance in establishing in-house capability for producing sales and advertising material using PageMaker for brochures, space ads, certificates of conformance/calibration, price list formats, news letters, forms of all types, etc.; Microsoft Excel for price lists (including rounding of prices); Microsoft Access for mailing lists of customers, trade publications, automated mailings, etc.; Microsoft Word for correspondence - letters, articles, news releases; Hewlett Packard ScanJet scanner with PaperPort and OmniPage software for scanning, editing, and digitizing scanned material.

These are some things we could do to help you. Qualifications provides a brief listing of experience which may be useful.

Machine Tool Sales Company was formed in 1976 to provide a complete marketing guidance service for metalworking manufacturers — marketing consulting, formulation of marketing plans and implementation, including organization of internal and external field sales forces, publicity, sales aids and other promotional material.

The Company has specialized in the introduction of new firms or new products of industrial firms, providing them with the full range of services necessary to identify their marketplace, define their market potential, establish market goals and provide the guidance necessary to realize them.

The Company is a full-line marketing services agency with in-house talent for copy and script writing; art and graphic design, type, and keylining by computer; sales/marketing management and training; and market consultation.

In identifying the marketplace and potential for new products, the Company utilizes the full range of marketing skills necessary. Available published data from trade associations, trade publications, U.S. Department of Commerce, etc. are used, when available. The Company then adds its background experience in sales approaches — direct sales, manufacturer representatives, or independent agent/distributors — each having relative strengths and weaknesses for certain products. In the case of one manufacturer, MTSC's advice was to offer the manufacturer's services to sales representatives and distributors as an open line — eliminate exclusive-territory distributors. The result was increased coverage while, with time, the manufacturer acquired a closer relationship with the user customers he was serving. These decisions require an in-depth knowledge of the products and their markets.

A computer facility — established in 1978 and up-dated in 1981, 1983, 1984, and new capacity added in 1986 (all now discontinued) and replaced by systems in 1991, 1995 and 1997 facilitates the handling and processing of data for price lists, direct mail, and automated mailing procedures. The Company utilizes PageMaker for brochures, space ads, certificates of conformance and calibration, price list formats, formal news letters, forms of all types, etc; Microsoft Excel for pricelists (price increases, rounding of prices to the nearest nickel, dime, etc.); Microsoft Access for mailing lists of customers, trade publications, automated mailings, etc.; Microsoft Word for correspondence - letters, articles, news releases; Hewlett Packard ScanJet 4C scanner with Deskscan II, PaperPort, and OmniPage software for scanning, editing and digitizing scanned material. MTSC trains client personnel in the use of the computer and these programs if in-house capability is desired.

MTSC offers a higher level of technical skills and manufacturing knowledge than most consulting firms. To respond to the increased volume of customer quality-system questionnaires seen by a client, we developed a Quality Assurance Manual and Supporting Documentation, written around the client’s existing manufacturing system. It enabled the client to respond to questionnaires with the statement: "The standards on which (the firm's) system are based are MIL-STD-45662A, which defines the requirements for a calibration system, mandatory for gage manufacturers and which forms the foundation for any QC system, MIL-I- 45208A, and MIL-Q-9858A. We fully meet the intent of MIL-STD-45662A. We also meet the intent of MIL-I-45208A and MIL-Q-9858A to the extent that they apply to the single-phase product, make-to-customer-print work which we perform. We also meet the intent of ISO-9000 (ISO-9001, 9002) and QS-9000 to the extent that they apply to our type of work." We also incorporated matrices which cross-referenced the standards for the ISO and QS standards.

If a manufacturer has been in business for 10 to 15 years and is seeing few glitches in engineering, production and purchasing areas, shop procedures generally suffice to meet standards. Primarily, changes involve revisions in the format of some shop forms and the creation of acceptable written supporting documentation. MTSC's background in engineering and experience in the metalworking manufacturing industry makes system analyses for this purpose practical. It is becoming more obvious with the passage of time that the need to meet ISO and QS standards is becoming an inevitability.

For about four years a client had been producing tooling for Ethicon, Inc., A Johnson & Johnson Company. Impressed by the level of quality of their work, the client was approached by J&J to determine the interest in becoming a certified supplier. This would mean a substantial increase in sales, but Ethicon’s procedures would have to be followed to the letter. With only some minor changes in shop routines and documentation, the QA Manual and Supporting Documentation, which we had developed previously, were easily modified to satisfy J&J’s headquarter staff people. In October, 1996, J&J conducted a Certified Quality Supplier award ceremony, to which the client’s entire plant was invited. The firm was the second of only two suppliers to qualify as certified suppliers for tooling. This could not have happened had we not begun work with the client to meet standards the previous year.

Thomas E. Shipley, Jr., President, holds a B.S.E.E degree, with honors, from Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Blacksburg, Virginia, and was awarded membership to Eta Kappa Nu, Tau Beta Pi, and Phi Kappa Phi honorary societies.

He obtained his training, beginning in 1950, from the General Electric Company — in engineering, sales, and marketing. He served in the corporate sales function, in field sales (OEM, distributor and user areas), as corporate and district application engineer, as product planner, and as a product specialist, responsible for the introduction of new industrial products to the marketplace.

In 1965, he joined Monarch Machine Tool Company, Sidney, Ohio, as Manager, NC Machine Sales. In 1969, as Sales Manager, he became responsible for national and international sales, including advertising and sales promotion activities.

Prior to forming his present company, he served as Vice President of Marketing for AA Gage, a division of U.S. Industries, Inc. He was responsible for the total marketing program for all products, including analysis of potential, development of marketing plans to increase the division's share, and institution of sales direction, advertising and promotion to assure successful implementation.

Since then he has applied his marketing, advertising and sales promotion experience to resolve the problems of his Company's clients. Most of his work has involved the introduction of new products or new firms and their products to the marketplace — market research, marketing plans, organization of field sales force, procedures for announcing and publicizing the products or service in the most efficient manner, etc. He has served as a part-time marketing manager for two firms – one from 1978 to 1987, the other from 1986 to 1997. In the former, he was to increase sales of a product which had, supposedly, saturated the market; In the latter, he was to reverse the long-time-trend of a decreasing backlog. In both cases, he initiated procedures that eliminated the problems.

He is a prolific writer and has been widely published by the trade press for general industrial, electrical, electronic, and metalworking sectors. He wrote a regular column on advanced technical matters for Metalworking Production & Purchasing magazine for six years. He has spoken on a wide range of subjects for various associations—SME, IEEE, NC Society, AES, and others. He is or has been a member of the SME, IEEE, AES, B/PAA, and the Economic Club of Detroit and is listed in Who’s Who in U.S. Writers, Editors, and Poets, Marquis Who’s Who in Finance and Industry and Who's Who in the Media and Communications, U.S. Registry’s Who’s Who in Leading American Executives, Strathmore's Who's Who, and the National Directory of Who’s Who in Executives and Professionals. Machine Tool Sales Company is listed in Bradford’s Directory of Marketing Research Agencies and Management Consultants in the United States and the World and is the only firm listed that specializes in the metalworking industry.

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