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Articles tagged with "productivity"
Results: 28
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Analyzing shear features: Basic knowledge can impact productivity, safetyUnderstanding shears is a matter of understanding shear features, including design and drive systems. This article offers information about evaluating shears and includes a list of 20 enhancements and explains each of them.
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Waterjet purchase becomes watershed moment: Equipment addition turns the tide for machine shop's growthAllright Tool Co. in Birmingham, Ala., increased its sales revenue by 79 percent only two years after buying its two waterjet cutting tables. The technology allowed the company to offer cutting services unmatched in the region and reduced its production time of parts dramatically.
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Proper guarding protects workers: Six steps to focusing on your employees' needsWhen people think of machine guarding, usually they think of devices to protect people from the moving parts on machinery.
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Safety pays |
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Maximizing your shop floor automation investment: Information flow is key to staying near full capacityIn the world of shorter-run and engineered-to-order production, fabricators want to keep their machines at near or full capacity, which means the business is making money. To accomplish this, the flow of information coming out of the front office has to be fast enough to drive the shop floor automation.
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KNOWLEDGE: The key to welding productivity?: Study's findings have different meanings across manufacturing sectorsIn the year 2000 manufacturing, construction, and mining industries had $34.1 billion worth of welding-related expenses. At the same time more than a half million people in the U.S. had welding-related jobs -- and that's not counting self-employed and nonproduction welders.
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Committing to consistent preventative maintenance: Why you should do more than pay it lip serviceWhy do we pay lip service to preventative maintenance but seldom practice it?
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Is Your Welding Lean?Want know how lean manufacturing principles relate to your welding operation? You have to look further than just what is happening in the welding cell.
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Pushing plate processing productivity: To speed up fabricating efforts, remove time wasteProductivity increases when manufacturing processes are executed as quickly as possible. Maximizing productivity also means minimizing the nonproductive segments of the manufacturing cycle. When all the time associated with manufacturing—the fabricating process itself, non-process in-cycle time, out of cycle waiting time, downtime, and secondary operations—is minimized that productivity is maximized.
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Principles of welding productivity: How three leadership techniques can improve qualityDo you doubt the merits of daily record keeping to improve welding reliability, standardize welding procedures, avoid excessive costs, and increase productivity? Read on. You won't any longer.
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Winning with Lean: How a stamper cut waste, boosted productivity, and raised employee retention |
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Listening to the loud messages Editor's Picks -- Work Force Development Web SitesOne of the loudest messages of the day was that managers, presidents, and owners need to ask the employees actually doing the work for their suggestions on how things should be done. And then listen.
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Productivity—The human factorProductivity, an economic bellwether, is predicted to slip from its recent highs in the coming months, largely because of job growth. Companies burned by the recent downturn need to continue to focus on achieving maximum productivity. This article addresses the labor component of productivity and how best to motivate employees to work at high levels.
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A new energy in appliance manufacturing: 13 SEER provides springboard for revamped manufacturing strategiesIn January 2006, a new 13 SEER mandate for appliancemakers takes effect. Although it isn't the only thing driving change in manufacturers' product designs, it is providing a springboard for manufacturers to make changes in their products that will help meet increasing customer demands.
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Welding more with less: New technologies take a comprehensive approach to orbital welding operationsWith the gap between new projects and available welders only expected to widen, welding companies have to make up the difference by utilizing machines that can compensate for the labor shortage and maximize the productivity of available welders. New developments in orbital welding technology are helping companies address these tasks. Today orbital welding equipment incorporates production monitoring and analysis capabilities and is designed to be simpler to use. In continuing to advance the technology, welding equipment suppliers probably will take more of an integrated approach, tackling projects using automation and machines that combine preparation and welding operations into a comprehensive tool.
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Opening the gate to efficiency: Farm equipment-maker combines new, custom machines to boost productivitySince 1945 family-owned and -operated Tarter Gate has grown in staff and sales as it has changed the design of its products. To keep up with sales, continue growing the company, and absorb as many rising costs as possible — particularly in steel and fuel prices — the company uses custom machines and new technologies to its advantage.
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Fastener insertion technology moves ahead: Advances in other technologies now being adapted to hardware insertionTechnological advances have turned simple press brakes and punch presses into productivie systems, now accepted as the norm for keeping fabricators competitive. Fastener-insertion machines are now incorporating many of those same advances to provide better quality and productivity and to eliminate bottlenecks as they work with the other technologically advanced fabricating machines in the shop.
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Reaching peak performance, productivity: Alpine uses automation to shorten lead-times, increase production capacityAlpine Engineered Products had more business than it could handle: It was straining its resources and personnel in a way that made the company have to look outside its semiautomatic welding practices. Eventually robotic welding helped the company meet its production, lead-time, and turnover challenges -- and keep the company growing.
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How to keep automated welding from going around in circles: Laser-based seam tracking proves to be the answer at A.O. Smith's American Water Heater Div. facilityThe move from manual welding to some form of machine or automated welding has been going on in all industries--including water heater manufacturing--for years. It's part of a desire to improve productivity and quality. A.O. Smith's American Water Heater Div. in Johnson City, Tenn., learned that first-hand.
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Keeping welding costs from spiraling out of control: Skyline Steel sees laser seam tracking as the answerSkyline Steel, a subsidiary of ArcelorMittal, recognized in 2001 that for it to win contracts for high-end projects requiring high-pressure and high-strength steel spiral pipe, it would need to become more competitive in price. That's why the company turned to Servo-Robot Corp. and its AUTO-TRAC laser vision seam tracking for pipe welding.
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Just say no to rework: Practice band saw techniques that help optimize time, costMost imperfections related to band sawing that cause rework can be avoided by following proper band sawing techniques and strategies including preventive maintenance, choosing the proper band saw blade, and using less fluid.
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Automating press brakes: Simulation software can boost productivityWhen the right technology is available, manufacturing small lot sizes can be a shrewd business strategy. Three developments are bringing automation to press brakes and, as a result, are helping fabricators meet customers' demands for smaller lot sizes.
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Fabricator puts the brake on bend inconsistency: Laser-based control system compensates for material variations, springbackWell-known for agriculture, Nebraska also has a strong manufacturing base. OEMs include Kawasaki, Husqvarna, Eaton, Thermo King, Claas, and Case New Holland. Standard Iron & Wire, a Minnesota-based fabricator, opened a manufacturing facility in Grand Island, Neb., to take advantage of this fertile manufacturing environment. Chief among its concerns was finding a press brake that would produce accurate, consistent parts. It purchased two LVD press brakes with the company's adaptive bending technology.
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Bending the new breeds of high-strength steel: New challenges, new tools, new rulesSeveral new breeds of high strength steels have arrived that bring with them a host of new opportunities. However, these new breeds also bring with them special challenges not common to bending mild steel, and with them, the need for new tools and new rules for proper bending.
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Doblando los nuevos tipos de acero de alta resistencia: Nuevos retos, nuevas herramientas, nuevas reglasHan surgido varios tipos nuevos de acero de alta resistencia que traen consigo una gran cantidad de nuevas oportunidades. Sin embargo, estos nuevos tipos tambin traen consigo retos especiales que no son comunes en el doblez de acero suave, y con stos, surge la necesidad de nuevas herramientas y nuevas reglas para un doblado adecuado.Foto cortesa de Wila USA.
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2 strategies for optimizing bending operations: Do setups offline and rely on press brake controls to adjust bending parametersFabricators typically encounter bottlenecks during setup and production in their press brake bending operations—obstacles that lead to downtime and fewer operators actually processing material. Representatives from Amada, LVD Strippit, Bystronic Inc. addressed these issues in a recent presentation. The two largest problems? Performing non-value-added steps and having to compensate for material variations. Fortunately, some new technologies and two key strategies can help fabricators optimize their press brake operations in these areas.
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Growing gains with lasers: Job shop uses data management to complement laser capabilitiesJeff Adams may have taken the nontraditional route in manufacturing by starting out in the laser equipment vendor community, but he has since moved to the job shop side of the industry, using his laser knowledge and expertise to help grow his 12-year-old laser job shop in Libertyville, Ill.
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Selecting equipment for maximum productivity: Is bigger always better?H. Meeuwsen B.V., a fabricator in Yerseke, Netherlands, found that purchasing a laser that could handle parts up to 12 m long greatly enhanced its capabilities. It augmented this purchase with a tandem press brake. One side of the brake has an 8-m capacity; the other has a 4-m capacity. This gives the company the ability to bend 12-m parts, if necessary, or to run the two brakes simultaneously for smaller items. Subsequent growth in customer demand led the company to consider purchasing a second laser. A careful analysis revealed that the company could do just fine with a smaller laser, so it purchased a laser with a 3-m capacity.
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