March 19, 2008
It's unusual in this day and age to have employee longevity. The national average is about 5 years on the job. Connecticut Spring and Stamping has consistently had many long term employees. This statistic alone is yet another reason why CSS continues to be an innovator and leader within the spring and stamping industry.
Gaston Pelletier, the current CSS Director of Lean Initiatives at Connecticut Spring and Stamping (CSS), represents a group of core employees that has worked at the company many years creating a world class culture of innovation. While he is a loyal and valued employee who has developed into an expert of most aspects of metal stamping, more importantly, he demonstrates growth in technical thought. Specifically, he represents new breed of manufacturing leaders that are intently focused on the process flow of work. He exemplifies CSS' biggest asset, its people, and his efforts, along with others, put the company at the forefront of the world's competitive precision spring and stamping manufacturing.
CSS is a spring and metal stamping company with over 320 employees located in Farmington, CT. The company has been in business 69 years with its mission to be the bench mark leader within their industry focused on delighting their customers. Its charter is to be a world class manufacturer. With over $35 million in sales, extensive stamping and spring capability, CSS meets this challenge and is clearly a global leader. The company is market driven. It satisfies the needs of distinct markets segments each with its own set of critical success factors and has developed expertise in challenging industries ranging from medical, aerospace, firearms & defense to automotive, technology and others. CSS is the vendor of choice for most of its customers who are industry leaders themselves. Most important to the leadership at CSS, however, is that the company prides itself on cultivating and keeping the industry's best people.
In February 2008, Gaston Pelletier marked 40 years at the Connecticut Spring & Stamping Corporation. His career in manufacturing began in 1968, after a four year toolmaker apprenticeship. For almost the next twenty years, he worked on honing his design and engineering skills. Throughout this time, Gaston developed a keen interest and enthusiasm for how things were made and how work flowed from one area to another. He also exemplified a zest of learning and enthusiasm which is still present today. It was not until the early 80s, however, that Gaston was able to take his manufacturing background and apply it to operations. Under the leadership the consulting firm Temple, Barker and Sloane, Gaston took on the role of selecting, purchasing and implementing the information and scheduling system that is still used in part today. After the successful implementation, there were many other milestones such as the first spring manufacturer to be certified ISO 9001. Their aerospace AS9100 certification, the implementation of lean, as well as focusing on FDA requirements for their medical market customers put CSS at the forefront of manufacturing thinking and processes.
As the years passed, Gaston's career took on more of a management and operations role to his current assignment as the Director of Lean Initiatives. While this concept means different things to different businesses, at CSS, the goal is to get everyone in the company to be their own independent thinker embedding the notion of efficiency into everything that they do and think about. To CSS innovative thinking is the key to staying a world leader. Gaston, with all of his enthusiasm, educates and works the principals with everyone he contacts. His current charter is to prioritize the projects and take on the one within CSS' walls that has the biggest opportunity to reduce waste and improve the process. This means value stream mapping the process, determining the improvement tasks, quantifying the benefit & setting the timeline with metrics in place to sustain the process. The end result for their customers is the best product, most efficiently made at the "lowest" cost.
Vice President of Sales, Steve Dicke, says "What makes CSS special is the fact that we have people like Gaston who are thinking about how to make everything they do better in everything they do and that he is willing to teach others! Our most valuable asset is our people and we're lucky that we have the years of history & devotion cultivating the best the world has to offer." Gaston is like the many others at CSS who are talking with enthusiasm and CSS will continue to be a world class manufacturer for many years to come.
For more information on specific services please contact Debbie Tine, CSS Marketing Manager.
