Metcam hosts tour at Georgia headquarters

Attendees toured eight different work centers on Metcam’s shop floor.

Metcam Inc., an Alpharetta, Ga.-based fabricator of sheet metal components and assemblies for OEMs, took part in the Association of Manufacturing Excellence’s Atlanta 2019 Lean Summit by hosting a manufacturing tour at its headquarters on May 9.

Attendees, including nine from outside the southeastern U.S., toured eight different work centers on the company’s shop floor, including fiber lasers, a panel bender, an automatic tool changer, welding, and hardware and paint.

They were able to see how a 300-unit job that used to take two days and three operators on the traditional press brake now takes only 16 hours or less with Metcam’s new panel bender. Zero parts from the workstation have been rejected or scrapped in more than 13 months.

Attendees also learned about the company’s employee-led kaizen teams. Without managerial assistance, production personnel have taken on the responsibility of evaluating their work setup, tools, and flow and coming up with improvements.