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Industry 4.0 insights: Getting the most out of time in a fab shop

The complexities of digitization boil down to this simple concept, especially in metal fabrication

Illustration depicting Industry 4.0 in manufacturing

Instead of using inefficient processes and blindly throwing resources at a problem, manufacturing leaders, armed with data and all the insights that come with Industry 4.0, can make 'surgical' improvements to make every minute count in a metal fabrication setting. Getty Images

Working in metal fabrication, especially these days, is like driving on a crowded highway. Frustration reigns as everyone fights traffic. The culprits are everywhere: people showing up late, going on frequent breaks, or taking too long on a setup. And, like drivers tapping their brakes miles ahead on the highway, snowballing into a major traffic jam, the culprits also seem to be nowhere. Minor stoppages occurring dozens of times during a shift might go unnoticed, but they end up pushing everyone behind schedule.

“There needs to be a cultural shift that involves looking at the organization horizontally, working across departments, and seeing everything as a single unit.” So said Mark Stevens, principal, manufacturing and distribution, Wipfli LLP, based in Green Bay, Wis. He made this comment during FMA’s “Industry 4.0 for Fabricators,” a virtual conference held in November.

For years metal fabrication (along with manufacturing overall) has focused on the productivity of machines, an approach analogous to building lanes on a highway. Thing is, no matter how many lanes a highway has, crashes still happen. No matter how good the highway is, drivers still depend on the skill and attentiveness of other drivers. To achieve world-class on-time delivery and quality, everyone on the highway has to be on their game.

How does a company achieve this? As Stevens explained during his presentation, “You make surgical improvements and elevate the awareness of how the value stream works together horizontally”—that is, how products flow from one end of the business to the other, from quoting to shipping. “The solution involves recognizing just how time can slip away. When we put solutions in place, it allows us to capture that time back and, hence, eliminates the need for more shifts, more hours, and more people.”

Stevens added that this is where “connected assets” come into play, with software measuring uptime; reporting the reasons for downtime; and feeding this information to the cloud, where data analytics can help companies identify and make unintuitive connections.

Stevens called this making “surgical continuous improvements,” and he described their benefits through a hypothetical case study about a $35 million organization. “Just like everyone else, they can’t hire enough people. They’re looking at making some acquisitions, but they know they have some challenging times truly using the capacity that may or may not be on the shop floor.”

He first described the CEO, who began learning more about overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) and how it could improve the entire organization. “She became a steward of time,” Stevens said, “and she created a battle call: ‘We need to make every minute count.’ She didn’t ask people to increase their speed, and she didn’t ask for quicker cycle times or for people to work longer hours. She instead asked, ‘Can we grab back the minutes that we don’t know are slipping away?’ Measuring uptime across all work centers, she realized there were an awful lot of breaks and downtime due to meetings. ‘Well,’ she asked, ‘what if we staggered these?’”

She worked to instill a pit-crew culture to shorten setups and inspection routines and to ensure operators and setup personnel got what they needed to do their job, including the staging of materials and tools at the point of use.

Stevens then described how the CFO correlated the variances (expected time versus actual time) and related those to standard costs. “[The CFO] understands there’s a variance happening with this job on this occurrence with this person at this work center, but she really can’t pinpoint what is causing it.”

She did know, however, that the variances were occurring when processing a job for a major customer that sales personnel were hoping to call on for even more business. But before they did so, company leaders took proactive action. With the data they had, they knew that work from that customer had variances that would get worse if volumes increased. The fabricator could quote higher to account for that variability, but could it instead maintain its competitiveness by making surgical improvements?

“Because [the CFO] was able to mesh the data together, she was about to identify what part and work center were driving the majority of the variances inside that one account. And she recognized there was an individual that probably could be coached by others to make him more efficient.”

Stevens described other surgical improvements, like connecting machine data with scheduling. Data sets show that certain teams in each workcell work more effectively together. So, why not schedule these people to work together more often? Also, what are these teams doing to perform so well?

And so the surgical improvements continue. Software, data analytics, and all the ideas that go into Industry 4.0 often sound complicated and convoluted. But it all boils down to a simple concept: Instead of using a blunt instrument (throwing more people or machines at a problem), those who are armed with data can perform surgical improvements to make every minute count.

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.