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A virtuous feedback loop in precision sheet metal fabrication

Tennessee shop promotes cross training, continual feedback

Value streams at FWE Inc. are color coded and obvious, even to those who have never stepped foot on the plant floor.

On Tuesday morning attendees at The FABRICATOR’s Leadership Summit, part of the Fabricators & Manufacturers Association Annual Meeting, visited a 100-employee plant about 30 miles north of Nashville that exemplifies how critical cross training has become for precision metal fabricators.

According to Derek Coddington, continuous improvement manager at Food Warming Equipment Inc.’s Portland, Tenn., plant, it isn’t unusual for welders to put down their guns and torches, even a laser welding station, and walk over to another value stream to clear a constraint. Color-coded, the value streams at the seven-year-old FWE facility are obvious, even for someone (like myself) who has never stepped foot in the plant before. Work flows from an automated laser cutting system with integrated part conveyors, through automated forming, welding, and electromechanical assembly.

FWE does have a product catalog, but of course the catalog is just a starting point. Food warmers can be customized to the nth degree, and the fabricator produces more than 800 variants. But even with such a high product mix, the company has developed a range of standard cycle times at individual work stations. Overall, a good portion of that work takes about seven days to flow from one end of the shop to the other, from laser cutting through bending, welding, assembly, and shipping.

As job clock-in and clock-outs take place, times are tracked with custom software, and employees are recognized and rewarded if they exceed throughput and quality expectations. As employees move from cell to cell, value stream to value stream, their perspective broadens beyond the process in front of them.

No doubt, such feedback is highly valued by the more than 300 attendees (a record number) at this year’s FMA Annual Meeting, an educational and networking event that’s all about the exchange of best practices, an exchange that’s a feedback loop in its own right. At FWE, such a feedback loop drives continuous improvement, helps refine standard processing times, gives employees skin in the game, improves performance in delivery and quality, and fosters an open shop culture, all at the same time. If that’s not a virtuous cycle, I don’t know what is.

About the Author
The Fabricator

Tim Heston

Senior Editor

2135 Point Blvd

Elgin, IL 60123

815-381-1314

Tim Heston, The Fabricator's senior editor, has covered the metal fabrication industry since 1998, starting his career at the American Welding Society's Welding Journal. Since then he has covered the full range of metal fabrication processes, from stamping, bending, and cutting to grinding and polishing. He joined The Fabricator's staff in October 2007.