One shop’s bending department evolution

Continuous improvement efforts can be considered failures only when they stop. At that point, you know acceptance of the status quo has won out.

That’s why stories of long-term continuous improvement pushes are important. For many organizations, it represents the real world. It takes several years until a “We’ve always done it this way” culture evolves into “Hey, that sounds like a good idea, so we should try it.” Quick culture changes are reserved for shops with only a few people or larger shops where large worker turnover has occurred. A majority of manufacturers just have to work at it on a continual basis.

Enterprise Welding & Fabricating Inc., Mentor, Ohio, took a multiyear journey to improve its bending operations. About only 13 percent of its nearly 150 employees work in the press brake area, but this small department plays a key role in adding value to the shop’s fabricating operations. The company’s goal to introduce more efficiency to the bending department over the years has been reached, especially evident in recent months as business has picked up.

Phil Carlon, the company’s director of operations, has been there for the last eight years and has witnessed the evolution. It’s been challenging at times, but it looks to have been worth it. The FABRICATOR chatted with Carlon to find out how Enterprise Welding & Fabricating got its bending operation to where it needed to be.

The FABRICATOR: Can you describe Enterprise Welding & Fabricating’s bending department evolution over the years?

Phil Carlon: I’ve been here about eight years. In those eight years, and even before then, we’ve gone through several attempts to modernize the press brake departments. It’s just one of those things that you try, you struggle, but you keep trying. We’ve had several good pushes over the years to get everything to work.

One of the first things we did was upgrade the controllers on all of the machines. That was about 10 years ago. We basically tried to get all the machines up to the same controller level. That way we can utilize programs from press brake to press brake with minimal changes necessary.

Obviously in doing that, we wanted to have tooling that was efficient and quick to change over. We had a high level of confidence this was going to work and help us get parts right the first time, every time.

So that’s when we made the investment in the precision-ground tooling. We’ve made several large purchases from Wilson Tool over the years, which has helped with the push to modernize.

One of the biggest things that we addressed was the struggle to get programs made for everything. Basically, we stopped programming on the floor. We used to rely on our craftsmen on the floor to make programs at the machine at the time of setup. That was incredibly inefficient. You are tying up a resource, when you could be bending parts. So that’s when we started to work toward the offline programming side of things.

With all that, we’ve gotten to a point that things just sort of happen now. We make programs ahead of time. Tooling is determined. We know where it is. We know it works. We can release a new part and expect to have good parts. We can release a brand-new job and within an hour it can be at the press brake ready to run.

FAB: What’s the focus now in the bending department?

Carlon: It’s one of those things that if you don’t stay on top of it, it’s going to fail. That’s why we have a dedicated resource who’s our forming technician, if you will. He is responsible for the programming, the tooling, and making sure things are organized.

If you don’t have that constant focus on it, it will stray, and that will go the opposite way just because people will resort to how things used to be done. So we definitely keep it an area of focus at all times because we have made such a large investment. We want to make sure we don’t go backwards with it.

There are many other areas for improvement in manufacturing. We’ve got several other departments, such as laser cutting, welding, and painting, that we are focused on. But for now, forming has gotten to the point where we feel pretty comfortable with it. We’re doing pretty well with it right now.

Carlon: We tried to get rid of as much conventional-style tooling as we could, but naturally you can’t get away from all of it. You have your larger bend radiuses, offset tools, or custom curls. Things like that you can’t get around unless you have those tools. But where we used a standard radius and we could get away with a standard precision-ground toolset, we converted to the new tooling immediately.

So now we have enough tooling on hand that we can set it up in each and every press brake. We don’t have to struggle with conventional tooling.

FAB: Have these investments given you a new level of flexibility with the press brakes?

Carlon: Yes. Most of the tooling we buy we can use in any press brake. They all have similar mounting systems. We don’t have dedicated toolsets per brake for the most part, but you literally can take a program and a toolset and go from one machine to another machine without too much of an issue.

FAB: Was storage an issue when it came down to having all these toolsets?

Carlon: It was. We had to purchase some higher-end cabinets that could hold the weight of the tooling. But it also allowed us to organize things by bend radius, die opening, and things like that.

Before tools were just sitting on a shelf. We didn’t have a chance of finding one. So everything has to have a home, and the tooling needed to be in its home. That investment in storage was definitely a part of the success story.

FAB: Do the press brakes have hydraulic clamping?

Carlon: We purchased two Cincinnati press brakes. One has the upper clamp on it, and the second one has upper and lower clamping on it. Then we purchased three additional press brakes from TRUMPF, and they had similar-style clamping built into it. So our last five purchases did have some type of hydraulic clamping installed. I think the clamping has been worth the investment. It’s certainly a convenience. Is it a worthwhile convenience? I would think so.

FAB: Moving part programming for press brakes off the shop floor is a big deal for many fabricators. How did Enterprise Welding & Fabricating cope during the transition?

Carlon: Again, having the dedicated resource really is what made it for us. We saw the benefit right away.

In the past you could watch a first run, and see the operator struggle at the press brake for hours. He was trying to get it right, but you’re thinking, How many other parts could I’ve run through this resource by now?

Now you see us go through with a successful program right from offline to the machine within an hour on the first run. It’s eye-opening for us.

So having that resource available, pushing, modifying jobs, and learning where we can do things better, that was what we had to do to get it to work. There’s no doubt the benefits are there.

FAB: What type of an individual makes a good lead like that in the bending department?

Carlon: We’ve had a couple of different guys now doing it for us, and honestly most times it’s someone that is interested in manufacturing but also technology and computers. That is what we found works best for this position because he does need to be able to run the software. You need to be able to get into the CAD software and pull out flat patterns and things like that. But that individual also has to have some hands-on experience to make the right decisions at the programming stage to get it all to work.

FAB: What traits do you look for in prospective press brake operators?

Carlon: We try to find somebody that’s got some manufacturing background these days. It’s more and more difficult to do that, and even more difficult to find somebody with press brake experience.

That’s why it is important for us to fine-tune our system and make work instructions as clear as possible. We need to show operators what needs to happen on these setups.

Now we really rely on the controllers to show the operator not only how the setup is used, but what tooling is used. It also provides a 3-D representation and shows how it will be gauged during the job. It’s right there on the screen right in front of them, so they can see it. Even some of our oldest press brakes have this same technology built-in. It’s awesome.

We knew it would be important moving forward given the hard time we have finding new employees and keeping guys. We knew we had to simplify it and make it as clear as possible, so that we can get up and running sooner with newer operators and be less concerned about quality issues.

And, obviously, training is important for the safety side of things. It’s still a very manual process that can be dangerous.

FAB: Have the press brake investments helped on the quality end of things?

Carlon: Like I said, it’s still a manual process, so we do see things off from time to time, but what we have seen a reduction in are things like parts being formed backwards or out of sequence. Mistakes like that definitely have been reduced because of the 3-D representation and having standardized tooling. We don’t have to worry about guys pulling the wrong tooling out of the bin because it’s so clearly labeled and stored.

What we also have seen as a result of the precision-ground tooling and some of the programming is that we can produce parts with reduced tolerances much more easily. It seems like each and every year our customers are pushing the envelope with their part designs. We’re getting squeezed on what we have to work with as far as tolerances go. It used to be a couple mil or even 3 mil for a bend length or a flange length, but nowadays it could be down to a half-mil or a quarter-mil. They’re still pushing the envelope on it, and sometimes we’re saying that’s no problem. We can do that.

FAB: Do you have plans for further investment in the bending area?

Carlon: We’re always looking to grow. When we do, we basically have to grow all of our departments together. So it’s not just forming; we have to look at everything in terms of where we need to improve. But forming definitely is one of those areas that’s grown and probably will keep growing.

Enterprise Welding & Fabricating Inc., www.enterprisewelding.com

Wilson Tool International, www.wilsontool.com